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RELIGIONS  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 


RELIGIONS:     ANCIENT  AND   MODERN. 

ANIMISM. 

By  EDWARD  CLODD,  Author  of  The  Story  of  Creation. 
PANTHEISM. 

By  JAMES  ALLANSON   PICTON,  Author  of  The  Religion  of  the 

Universe. 
THE  RELIGIONS  OF  ANCIENT  CHINA. 

By  Professor  GILES,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Chinese  in  the  University 

of  Cambridge. 
THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE. 

By  JANE  HARRISON,  Lecturer  at  Newnham  College,  Cambridge, 

Author  of  Prolegomena  to  Study  of  Greek  Religion. 
ISLAM. 

By  SYED  AMEER  ALI,  M.A.,  C.I.E.,  late  of  H.M.'s  High  Court 

of  Judicature  in  Bengal,  Author  of  The  Spirit  of  Islam  and  The 

Ethics  of  Islam. 
MAGIC  AND  FETISHISM. 

By  Dr.  A.  C.  HADDON,  F.R.S.,  Lecturer  on  Ethnology  at  Cam- 
bridge University. 
THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT. 

By  Professor  W.  M.  FLINDERS  PETRIE,  F.R.S. 
THE  RELIGION  OF  BABYLONIA  AND  ASSYRIA. 

By  THEOPHILUS  G.  PINCHES,  late  of  the  British  Museum. 
BUDDHISM.     2  vols. 

By  Professor  RHYS  DAVIDS,  LL.D.,  late  Secretary  of  The  Royal 

Asiatic  Society. 
HINDUISM. 

By  Dr.  L.  D.  BARNETT,  of  the  Department  of  Oriental  Printed 

Books  and  MSS.,  British  Museum. 
SCANDINAVIAN  RELIGION. 

•By  WILLIAM  A.  CRAIGIE,  Joint  Editor  of  the  Oxford  English 

Dictionary. 
CELTIC  RELIGION. 

By  Professor  ANWYL,  Professor  of  Welsh  at  University  College, 

Aberystwyth. 
THE  MYTHOLOGY  OF  ANCIENT  BRITAIN  AND  IRELAND. 

By  CHARLES  SQUIRE,  Author  of  The  Mythology  of  the  British 

Islands. 
JUDAISM. 

By  ISRAEL  ABRAHAMS,   Lecturer  in  Talmudic  Literature  in 

Cambridge  University,  Author  of  Jewish  Life  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
SHINTO.     By  W.  G.  ASTON,  C.M.G. 
THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  MEXICO  AND  PERU. 

By  LEWIS  SPENCE,  M.A. 
THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  HEBREWS. 

By  Professor  YASTROW. 


THE   RELIGION   OF 

ANCIENT     ROME 


By 

CYRIL    BAILEY,    M.A. 

FILLOW  AND  TUTOR  OF  BALLIOL  COLLEGE,  OXFORD 


CHICAGO 
THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


Edinburgh  :  T.  and  A.  CONSTABLE,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 


STACK 
ANNEX 

£>L 
Sol 


I  WISH  to  express  my  warm  thanks  to 
Mr.  W.  Warde  Fowler  for  his  kindness 
in  reading  my  proofs,  and  for  many  valu- 
able hints  and  suggestions. 

C.  B. 

BALLIOL  COLLEGE, 

Jan.  25th,  1907. 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

i.  INTRODUCTION — SOUHCES  AND  SCOPE    ...  1 

u.  THE  'ANTECEDENTS'  OF  ROMAN  RELIGION  .         .  4 

in.  MAIN  FEATURES  OF  THE  RELIGION  OF  NUMA       .  12 

iv.  EARLY   HISTORY  OF   ROME — THE  AGRICULTURAL 

COMMUNITY 31 

v.  WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD      ....  36 

vi.  WORSHIP  OF  THE  FIELDS     .....  58 

vn.  WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 75 

viii.  AUGURIES  AND  AUSPICES      .....  96 

ix.  RELIGION  AND  MORALITY — CONCLUSION  103 


THE  EELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  EOME 
CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTION — SOURCES   AND   SCOPE 

THE  conditions  of  our  knowledge  of  the  native 
religion  of  early  Rome  may  perhaps  be  best  illus- 
trated by  a  parallel  from  Roman  archaeology.  The 
visitor  to  the  Roman  Forum  at  the  present  day,  if 
he  wishes  to  reconstruct  in  imagination  the  Forum 
of  the  early  Republic,  must  not  merely  'think 
away '  many  strata  of  later  buildings,  but,  we  are 
told,  must  picture  to  himself  a  totally  different 
orientation  of  the  whole:  the  upper  layer  of 
remains,  which  he  sees  before  him,  is  for  his 
purpose  in  most  cases  not  merely  useless,  but 
positively  misleading.  In  the  same  way,  if  we 
wish  to  form  a  picture  of  the  genuine  Roman 
religion,  we  cannot  find  it  immediately  in  classical 
literature;  we  must  banish  from  our  minds  all 
that  is  due  to  the  contact  with  the  East  and 
Egypt,  and  even  with  the  other  races  of  Italy, 
A  i 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

and  we  must  imagine,  so  to  speak,  a  totally 
different  mental  orientation  before  the  great 
influx  of  Greek  literature  and  Greek  thought, 
which  gave  an  entirely  new  turn  to  Roman  ideas 
in  general,  and  in  particular  revolutionised  re- 
ligion by  the  introduction  of  anthropomorphic 
notions  and  sensuous  representations.  But  in 
this  difficult  search  we  are  not  left  without 
indications  to  guide  us.  In  the  writings  of  the 
savants  of  the  late  Republic  and  of  the  Empire, 
and  in  the  Augustan  poets,  biassed  though  they 
are  in  their  interpretations  by  Greek  tendencies, 
there  is  embodied  a  great  wealth  of  ancient 
custom  and  ritual,  which  becomes  significant 
when  we  have  once  got  the  clue  to  its  meaning. 
More  direct  evidence  is  afforded  by  a  large  body 
of  inscriptions  and  monuments,  and  above  all  by 
the  surviving  Calendars  of  the  Roman  festival 
year,  which  give  us  the  true  outline  of  the  cere- 
monial observances  of  the  early  religion. 

It  is  not  within  the  scope  of  this  sketch  to 
enter,  except  by  way  of  occasional  illustration, 
into  the  process  of  interpretation  by  which  the 
patient  work  of  scholars  has  disentangled  the 
form  and  spirit  of  the  native  religion  from  the 
mass  of  foreign  accretions.  I  intend  rather  to 
assume  the  process,  and  deal,  as  far  as  it  is 

2 


INTRODUCTION 

possible  in  so  controversial  a  subject,  with  results 
upon  which  authorities  are  generally  agreed. 
Neither  will  any  attempt  be  made  to  follow  the 
development  which  the  early  religion  underwent 
in  later  periods,  when  foreign  elements  were 
added  and  foreign  ideas  altered  and  remoulded 
the  old  tradition.  We  must  confine  ourselves  to 
a  single  epoch,  in  which  the  native  Roman  spirit 
worked  out  unaided  the  ideas  inherited  from 
half- civilised  ancestors,  and  formed  that  body  of 
belief  and  ritual,  which  was  always,  at  least 
officially,  the  kernel  of  Roman  religion,  and 
constituted  what  the  Romans  themselves  — 
staunch  believers  in  their  own  traditional  history 
— loved  to  describe  as  the  'Religion  of  Numa.' 
We  must  discover,  as  far  as  we  can,  how  far  its 
inherited  notions  ran  parallel  with  those  of  other 
primitive  religions,  but  more  especially  we  must 
try  to  note  what  is  characteristically  Roman  alike 
in  custom  and  ritual  and  in  the  motives  and 
spirit  which  prompted  them. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  'ANTECEDENTS'  OF  ROMAN  RELIGION 

IN  every  early  religion  there  will  of  course  be 
found,  apart  from  external  influence,  traces  of 
its  own  internal  development,  of  stages  by  which 
it  must  have  advanced  from  a  mass  of  vague  and 
primitive  belief  and  custom  to  the  organised 
worship  of  a  civilised  community.  The  religion 
of  Rome  is  no  exception  to  this  rule;  we  can 
detect  in  its  later  practice  evidences  of  primitive 
notions  and  habits  which  it  had  in  common  with 
other  semi-barbarous  peoples,  and  we  shall  see 
that  the  leading  idea  in  its  theology  is  but  a  char- 
acteristically Roman  development  of  a  marked 
feature  in  most  early  religions. 

1.  Magic. — Anthropology  has  taught  us  that 
in  many  primitive  societies  religion — a  sense  of 
man's  dependence  on  a  power  higher  than  himself 
— is  preceded  by  a  stage  of  magic — a  belief  in 
man's  own  power  to  influence  by  occult  means 
the  action  of  the  world  around  him.  That  the 
4 


'ANTECEDENTS'  OF  ROMAN  RELIGION 

ancestors  of  the  Roman  community  passed 
through  this  stage  seems  clear,  and  in  surviving 
religious  practice  we  may  discover  evidence  of 
such  magic  in  various  forms.  There  is,  for 
instance,  what  anthropology  describes  as  'sym- 
pathetic magic ' — the  attempt  to  influence  the 
powers  of  nature  by  an  imitation  of  the  process 
which  it  is  desired  that  they  should  perform.  Of 
this  we  have  a  characteristic  example  in  the 
ceremony  of  the  aquaelicium,  designed  to  pro- 
duce rain  after  a  long  drought.  In  classical 
times  the  ceremony  consisted  in  a  procession 
headed  by  the  pontifices,  which  bore  the  sacred 
rain-stone  from  its  resting-place  by  the  Porta 
Capena  to  the  Capitol,  where  offerings  were  made 
to  the  sky-deity,  luppiter,  but 1  from  the  analogy 
of  other  primitive  cults  and  the  sacred  title  of 
the  stone  (lapis  manalis),  it  is  practically  certain 
that  the  original  ritual  was  the  purely  imitative 
process  of  pouring  water  over  the  stone.  A 
similar  rain-charm  may  possibly  be  seen  in  the 
curious  ritual  of  the  argeorum  sacra,  when 
puppets  of  straw  were  thrown  into  the  Tiber — a 
symbolic  wetting  of  the  crops,  to  which  many 
parallels  may  be  found  among  other  primitive 
peoples.  A  sympathetic  charm  of  a  rather 

1  Frazer,  Golden  Bough,  vol.  i.  pp.  81  ff. 

5 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

different  character  seems  to  survive  in  the  cere- 
mony of  the  augurium  canarium,  at  which  a 
red  dog  was  sacrificed  for  the  prosperity  of  the 
crop  —  a  symbolic  killing  of  the  red  mildew 
(robigo);  and  again  the  slaughter  of  pregnant 
cows  at  the  Fordicidia  in  the  middle  of  April, 
before  the  sprouting  of  the  corn,  has  a  clearly 
sympathetic  connection  with  the  fertility  of  the 
earth.  Another  prominent  survival  —  equally 
characteristic  of  primitive  peoples — is  the  sacred- 
ness  which  attaches  to  the  person  of  the  priest- 
king,  so  that  his  every  act  or  word  may  have  a 
magic  significance  or  effect.  This  is  reflected 
generally  in  the  Roman  priesthood,  but  especially 
in  the  ceremonial  surrounding  the  flamen  Dialis, 
the  priest  of  luppiter.  He  must  appear  always 
in  festival  garb,  fire  may  never  be  taken  from  his 
hearth  but  for  sacred  purposes,  no  other  person 
may  ever  sleep  in  his  bed,  the  cuttings  of  his 
hair  and  nails  must  be  preserved  and  buried  be- 
neath an  arbor  felix — no  doubt  a  magic  charm  for 
fertility — he  must  not  eat  or  even  mention  a  goat 
or  a  bean,  or  other  objects  of  an  unlucky  character. 
2.  Worship  of  Natural  Objects. — A  very 
common  feature  in  the  early  development 
of  religious  consciousness  is  the  worship  of 
natural  objects — in  the  first  place  of  the  objects 

6 


'ANTECEDENTS'  OF  ROMAN  RELIGION 

themselves  and  no  more,  but  later  of  a  spirit 
indwelling  in  them.  The  distinction  is  no  doubt 
in  individual  cases  a  difficult  one  to  make,  and 
we  find  that  among  the  Romans  the  earlier 
worship  of  the  object  tends  to  give  way  to  the 
cult  of  the  inhabiting  spirit,  but  examples  may 
be  found  which  seem  to  belong  to  the  earlier 
stage.  We  have,  for  instance,  the  sacred  stone 
(silex)  which  was  preserved  in  the  temple  of 
luppiter  on  the  Capitol,  and  was  brought  out  to 
play  a  prominent  part  in  the  ceremony  of  treaty- 
making.  The  fetial,  who  on  that  occasion  repre- 
sented the  Roman  people,  at  the  solemn  moment 
of  the  oath-taking,  struck  the  sacrificial  pig  with 
the  silex,  saying  as  he  did  so,  '  Do  thou,  Diespiter, 
strike  the  Roman  people  as  I  strike  this  pig  here 
to-day,  and  strike  them  the  more,  as  thou  art 
greater  and  stronger.'  Here  no  doubt  the  under- 
lying notion  is  not  merely  symbolical,  but  in 
origin  the  stone  is  itself  the  god,  an  idea  which 
later  religion  expressed  in  the  cult- title  specially 
used  in  this  connection,  luppiter  Lapis.  So 
again,  in  all  probability,  the  termini  or  boundary- 
stones  between  properties  are  in  origin  the  objects 
— though  later  only  the  site — of  a  yearly  ritual 
at  the  festival  of  the  Terminalia  on  February  the 
23rd,  and  they  are,  as  it  were,  summed  up  in  '  the 

7 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

god  Terminus/  the  great  sacred  boundary-stone, 
which  had  its  own  shrine  within  the  Capitoline 
temple,  because,  according  to  the  legend,  'the  god ' 
refused  to  budge  even  to  make  room  for  luppiter. 
The  same  notion  is  most  likely  at  the  root  of  the 
two  great  domestic  cults  of  Vesta,  '  the  hearth,' 
and  lanus,  '  the  door,'  though  a  more  spiritual  idea 
was  soon  associated  with  them ;  we  may  notice  too 
in  this  connection  the  worship  of  springs,  summed 
up  in  the  subsequent  deity  Fons,  and  of  rivers, 
such  as  Volturnus,  the  cult-name  of  the  Tiber. 

3.  Worship  of  Trees. — But  most  conspicuous 
among  the  cults  of  natural  objects,  as  in  so 
many  primitive  religions,  is  the  worship  of  trees. 
Here,  though  doubtless  at  first  the  tree  was 
itself  the  object  of  veneration,  surviving  instances 
seem  rather  to  belong  to  the  later  period 
when  it  was  regarded  as  the  abode  of  the 
spirit.  We  may  recognise  a  case  of  this  sort 
in  the  ficus  Ruminalis,  once  the  recipient  of 
worship,  though  later  legend,  which  preferred  to 
find  an  historical  or  mythical  explanation  of  cults, 
looked  upon  it  as  sacred  because  it  was  the  scene 
of  the  suckling  of  Romulus  and  Remus  by  the 
wolf.  Another  fig-tree  with  a  similar  history  is 
the  caprificus  of  the  Campus  Martius,  sub- 
sequently the  site  of  the  worship  of  luno  Capro- 

8 


'ANTECEDENTS'  OF  ROMAN  RELIGION 

tina.  A  more  significant  case  is  the  sacred  oak 
of  luppiter  Feretrius  on  the  Capitol,  on  which 
the  spolia  opima  were  hung  after  the  triumph — 
probably  in  early  times  a  dedication  of  the  booty 
to  the  spirit  inhabiting  the  tree.  Outside  Rome, 
showing  the  same  ideas  at  work  among  neighbour- 
ing peoples,  was  the  '  golden  bough '  in  the  grove 
of  Diana  at  Aricia.  Nor  was  it  only  special  trees 
which  were  thus  regarded  as  the  home  of  a  deity ; 
the  tree  in  general  is  sacred,  and  any  one  may 
chance  to  be  inhabited  by  a  spirit.  The  feeling 
of  the  country  population  on  this  point  comes  out 
clearly  in  the  prayer  which  Cato  recommends  his 
farmer  to  use  before  making  a  clearing  in  a  wood : 
'  Be  thou  god  or  goddess,  to  whom  this  grove  is 
sacred,  be  it  granted  to  us  to  make  propitiatory 
sacrifice  to  thee  with  a  pig  for  the  clearing  of 
this  sacred  spot ' ;  here  we  have  a  clear  instance 
of  the  tree  regarded  as  the  dwelling  of  the  sacred 
power,  and  it  is  interesting  to  compare  the  many 
similar  examples  which l  Dr.  Frazer  has  collected 
from  different  parts  of  the  world. 

4.  Worship  of  Animals. — Of  the  worship  of 
animals  we  have  comparatively  little  evidence  in 
Roman  religion,  though  we  may  perhaps  detect  it 
in  a  portion  of  the  mysterious  ritual  of  the  Luper- 

1  Golden  Bough,  vol.  i.  pp.  181-185. 
9 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

calia,  where  the  Luperci  dressed  themselves  in  the 
skins  of  the  sacrificed  goats  and  smeared  their 
faces  with  the  blood,  thus  symbolically  trying  to 
bring  themselves  into  communion  with  the  sacred 
animal.  We  may  recognise  it  too  in  the  associa- 
tion of  particular  animals  with  divinities,  such  as 
the  sacred  wolf  and  woodpecker  of  Mars,  but  on 
the  whole  we  may  doubt  whether  the  worship 
of  animals  ever  played  so  prominent  a  part  in 
Roman  religion  as  the  cult  of  other  natural 
objects. 

5.  Animism. — Such  are  some  of  the  survivals  of 
very  early  stages  of  religious  custom  which  still 
kept  their  place  in  the  developed  religion  of  Rome, 
but  by  far  the  most  important  element  in  it,  which 
might  indeed  be  described  as  its '  immediate  ante- 
cedent,' is  the  state  of  religious  feeling  to  which 
anthropologists  have  given  the  name  of '  Animism.' 
As  far  as  we  can  follow  the  development  of  early 
religions,  this  attitude  of  mind  seems  to  be  the 
direct  outcome  of  the  failure  of  magic.  Primi- 
tive man  begins  to  see  that  neither  he  nor  his 
magicians  really  possess  that  occult  control  over 
the  forces  of  nature  which  was  the  supposed  basis 
of  magic:  the  charm  fails,  the  spell  does  not 
produce  the  rain,  and  when  he  looks  for  the 
cause,  he  can  only  argue  that  these  things  must 
10 


'ANTECEDENTS'  OF  ROMAN  RELIGION 

be  in  the  hands  of  some  power  higher  than  his 
own.  The  world  then  and  its  various  familiar 
objects  become  for  him  peopled  with  spirits,  like 
in  character  to  men,  but  more  powerful,  and  his 
success  in  life  and  its  various  operations  depends 
on  the  degree  in  which  he  is  able  to  propitiate 
these  spirits  and  secure  their  co-operation.  If 
he  desires  rain,  he  must  win  the  favour  of  the 
spirit  who  controls  it,  if  he  would  fell  a  tree  and 
suffer  no  harm,  he  must  by  suitable  offerings 
entice  the  indwelling  spirit  to  leave  it.  His 
' theology '  in  this  stage  is  the  knowledge  of  the 
various  spirits  and  their  dwellings,  his  ritual  the 
due  performance  of  sacrifice  for  purposes  of  pro- 
pitiation and  expiation.  It  was  in  this  state  of 
religious  feeling  that  the  ancestors  of  Rome  must 
have  lived  before  they  founded  their  agricultural 
settlement  on  the  Palatine :  we  must  try  now  to 
see  how  far  it  had  retained  this  character  and 
what  developments  it  had  undergone  when  it  had 
crystallised  into  the  '  Religion  of  Numa.' 


ii 


CHAPTER   III 

MAIN   FEATURES   OF   THE   RELIGION   OF   NUMA 

1.  Theology. — The  characteristic  appellation  of 
a  divine  spirit  in  the  oldest  stratum  of  the 
Roman  religion  is  not  deus,  a  god,  but  rather 
numen,  a  power:  he  becomes  deus  when  he 
obtains  a  name,  and  so  is  on  the  way  to  acquiring 
a  definite  personality,  but  in  origin  he  is  simply 
the '  spirit '  of  the  '  animistic '  period,  and  retains 
something  of  the  spirit's  characteristics.  Thus 
among  the  divinities  of  the  household  we  shall  see 
later  that  the  Genius  and  even  the  Lar  Familiaris, 
though  they  attained  great  dignity  of  conception, 
and  were  the  centre  of  the  family  life,  and  to 
some  extent  of  the  family  morality,  never  quite 
rose  to  the  position  of  full-grown  gods;  while 
among  the  spirits  of  the  field  the  wildness  and 
impishness  of  character  associated  with  Faunus 
and  his  companion  Inuus — almost  the  cobolds 
or  hobgoblins  of  the  flocks — reflects  clearly  the 
old  '  animistic  '  belief  in  the  natural  evilness  of 
12 


THE  RELIGION  OF  NUMA 

the  spirits  and  their  hostility  to  men.  The 
notion  of  the  numen  is  always  vague  and  in- 
definite :  even  its  sex  may  be  uncertain.  '  Be 
thou  god  or  goddess '  is  the  form  of  address  in 
the  farmer's  prayer  already  quoted  from  Cato  : 
'  be  it  male  or  female '  is  the  constant  formula  in 
liturgies  and  even  dedicatory  inscriptions  of  a 
much  later  period. 

These  spirits  are,  as  we  have  seen,  indwellers 
in  the  objects  of  nature  and  controllers  of  the 
phenomena  of  nature:  but  to  the  Roman  they 
were  more.  Not  merely  did  they  inhabit  places 
and  things,  but  they  presided  over  each  phase 
of  natural  development,  each  state  or  action  in 
the  life  of  man.  Varro,  for  instance,  gives  us  a 
list  of  the  deities  concerned  in  the  early  life  of 
the  child,  which,  though  it  bears  the  marks  of 
priestly  elaboration,  may  yet  be  taken  as  typical 
of  the  feeling  of  the  normal  Roman  family. 
There  is  Vaticanus,  who  opens  the  child's  mouth 
to  cry,  Cunina,  who  guards  his  cradle,  Edulia 
and  Potina,  who  teach  him  to  eat  and  drink, 
Statilinus,  who  helps  him  to  stand  up,  Adeona 
and  Abeona,  who  watch  over  his  first  footstep, 
and  many  others  each  with  his  special  province 
of  protection  or  assistance.  The  farmer  similarly 
is  in  the  hands  of  a  whole  host  of  divinities  who 
13 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

assist  him  at  each  stage  of  ploughing,  hoeing, 
sowing,  reaping,  and  so  forth.  If  the  numen  then 
lacks  personal  individuality,  he  has  a  very 
distinct  specialisation  of  function,  and  if  man's 
appeal  to  the  divinity  is  to  be  successful,  he  must 
be  very  careful  to  make  it  in  the  right  quarter : 
it  was  a  stock  joke  in  Roman  comedy  to  make 
a  character  '  ask  for  water  from  Liber,  or  wine 
from  the  nymphs.'  Hence  we  find  in  the  prayer 
formulae  in  Cato  and  elsewhere  the  most  careful 
precautions  to  prevent  the  accidental  omission 
of  the  deity  concerned :  usually  the  worshipper 
will  go  through  the  whole  list  of  the  gods  who 
may  be  thought  to  have  power  in  the  special 
circumstances;  sometimes  he  will  conclude  his 
prayer  with  the  formula  'whosoever  thou  art,' 
or  :  and  any  other  name  by  which  thou  mayest 
desire  to  be  called.'  The  numen  is  thus  vague 
in  his  conception  but  specialised  in  his  function, 
and  so  later  on,  when  certain  deities  have  acquired 
definite  names  and  become  prominent  above 
the  rest,  the  worshipper  in  appealing  to  them 
will  add  a  cult- title,  to  indicate  the  special 
character  in  which  he  wishes  the  deity  to  hear : 
the  woman  in  childbirth  will  appeal  to  luno 
Lucina,  the  general  praying  for  victory  to  luppiter 
Victor,  the  man  who  is  taking  an  oath  to  luppiter 


THE  RELIGION  OF  NUMA 

as  the  deus  Fidius.  As  a  still  later  develop- 
ment the  cult-title  will,  as  it  were,  break  off  and 
set  up  for  itself,  usually  in  the  form  of  an  abstract 
personification  :  luppiter,  in  the  two  special  capa- 
cities just  noted,  gives  birth  to  Victoria  and  Fides. 
The  conception  of  the  numen  being  so  form- 
less and  indefinite,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
in  the  genuine  Roman  religion  there  should 
have  been  no  anthropomorphic  representations 
of  the  divinity  at  all.  '  For  170  years/  Varro 
tells  us,  taking  his  date  from  the  traditional 
foundation  of  the  city  in  754  B.C.,  '  the  Romans 
worshipped  their  gods  without  images,'  and  he 
adds  the  characteristic  comment,  '  those  who 
introduced  representations  among  the  nations, 
took  away  fear  and  brought  in  falsehood.' 
Symbols  of  a  few  deities  were  no  doubt  recog- 
nised :  we  have  noticed  already  the  silex  of 
luppiter  and  the  boundary-stone  of  Terminus, 
which  were  probably  at  an  earlier  period  them- 
selves objects  of  worship,  and  to  these  we  may 
add  the  sacred  spears  of  Mars,  and  the  sigilla  of 
the  State-Penates.  But  for  the  most  part  the 
numina  were  without  even  such  symbolic  repre- 
sentation, nor  till  about  the  end  of  the  regal 
period  was  any  form  of  temple  built  for  them 
to  dwell  in.  The  sacred  fire  of  Vesta  near  the 
15 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

Forum  was,  it  is  true,  from  the  earliest  times  en- 
closed in  a  building ;  this,  however,  was  no  temple, 
but  merely  an  erection  with  the  essentially  practical 
purpose  of  preventing  the  extinction  of  the  fire 
by  rain.  The  first  temple  in  the  full  sense  of 
the  word  was  according  to  tradition  built  by 
Servius  Tullius  to  Diana  on  the  Aventine:  the 
tradition  is  significant,  for  Diana  was  not  one 
of  the  di  indigetes,  the  old  deities  of  the  '  Religion 
of  Numa/  but  was  introduced  from  the  neighbour- 
ing town  of  Aricia,  and  the  attribution  to  Servius 
Tullius  nearly  always  denotes  an  Etruscan1  or 
at  any  rate  a  non-Roman  origin.  There  were, 
however,  altars  in  special  places  to  particular 
deities,  built  sometimes  of  stone,  sometimes  in  a 
more  homely  manner  of  earth  or  sods.  We  hear 
for  instance  of  the  altar  of  Mars  in  the  Campus 
Martius,  of  Quirinus  on  the  Quirinal,  of  Saturnus 
at  the  foot  of  the  Capitol,  and  notably  of  the 
curious  underground  altar  of  Census  on  what 
was  later  the  site  of  the  Circus  Maxiinus.  But 
more  characteristic  than  the  erection  of  altars 
is  the  connection  of  deities  with  special  localities. 
Naturally  enough  in  the  worship  of  the  house- 
hold Vesta  had  her  seat  at  the  hearth,  lanus 

1  Etruscan  builders  were  according  to  tradition  employed  on 
the  earliest  Roman  temples. 

16 


THE  RELIGION  OF  NUMA 

at  the  door,  and  the  'gods  of  the  storehouse' 
(Penates')  at  the  cupboard  by  the  hearth,  but  the 
same  idea  appears  too  in  the  state-cult.  Hill- 
tops, groves,  and  especially  clearings  in  groves 
(luci)  are  the  most  usual  sacred  localities.  Thus 
Quirinus  has  his  own  sacred  hill,  luppiter  is 
worshipped  on  the  Capitol,  Vesta  and  luno 
Lucina  have  their  sacred  groves  within  the 
boundaries  of  the  city,  and  Dea  Dia,  Robigus,  and 
Furrina  similar  groves  at  the  limits  of  Roman 
territory.  The  record  of  almost  every  Roman 
cult  reveals  the  importance  of  locality  in  con- 
nection with  the  di  indigetes,  and  the  localities 
are  usually  such  as  would  be  naturally  chosen 
by  a  pastoral  and  agricultural  people. 

Such  were  roughly  the  main  outlines  of  the 
genuine  Roman  '  theology.'  It  has  no  gods  of 
human  form  with  human  relations  to  one  another, 
interested  in  the  life  of  men  and  capable  of  the 
deepest  passions  of  hatred  and  affection  towards 
them,  such  as  we  meet,  for  instance,  in  the 
mythology  of  Greece,  but  only  these  impersonal 
individualities,  if  we  may  so  call  them,  capable 
of  no  relation  to  one  another,  but  able  to  bring 
good  or  ill  to  men,  localised  usually  in  their 
habitations,  but  requiring  no  artificial  dwelling  or 
elaborate  adornment  of  their  abode ;  becoming 
B  17 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

gradually  more  and  more  specialised  in  function, 
yet  gaining  thereby  no  more  real  protective  care 
for  their  worshippers — a  cold  and  heartless 
hierarchy,  ready  to  exact  their  due,  but  incapable 
of  inspiring  devotion  or  enthusiasm.  Let  us  ask 
next  how  the  Romans  conceived  of  their  own 
relations  towards  them. 

2.  The  Relation  of  Gods  and  Men.— The 
character  of  the  Roman  was  essentially  practical 
and  his  natural  mental  attitude  that  of  the 
lawyer.  And  so  in  his  relation  towards  the 
divine  beings  whom  he  worshipped  there  was 
little  of  sentiment  or  affection:  all  must  be 
regulated  by  clearly  understood  principles  and 
carried  out  with  formal  exactness.  Hence  the 
ius  sacrum,,  the  body  of  rights  and  duties  hi 
the  matter  of  religion,  is  regarded  as  a  depart- 
ment of  the  ius  publicum,  the  fundamental  con- 
stitution of  the  state,  and  it  is  significant,  as 
Marquardt  has  observed,  that  it  was  Numa,  a 
king  and  a  lawgiver,  and  not  a  prophet  or  a  poet, 
who  was  looked  upon  as  the  founder  of  the 
Roman  religion.  Starting  from  the  simple 
general  feeling  of  a  dependence  on  a  higher  power 
(religio),  which  is  common  to  all  religions,  the 
Roman  gives  it  his  own  characteristic  colour 
when  he  conceives  of  that  dependence  as  ana- 
18 


THE  RELIGION  OF  NUMA 

logous  to  a  civil  contract  between  man  and  god. 
Both  sides  are  under  obligation  to  fulfil  their 
part:  if  a  god  answers  a  man's  prayer,  he  must 
be  repaid  by  a  thank-offering:  if  the  man  has 
fulfilled  '  his  bounden  duty  and  service/  the  god 
must  make  his  return :  if  he  does  not,  either  the 
cause  lies  in  an  unconscious  failure  on  the  human 
side  to  carry  out  the  exact  letter  of  the  law,  or 
else,  if  the  god  has  really  broken  his  contract, 
he  has,  as  it  were,  put  himself  out  of  court  and 
the  man  may  seek  aid  elsewhere.  In  this  notion 
we  have  the  secret  of  Rome's  readiness  under 
stress  of  circumstances,  when  all  appeals  to  the 
old  gods  have  failed,  to  adopt  foreign  deities  and 
cults  in  the  hope  of  a  greater  measure  of 
success. 

The  contract-notion  may  perhaps  appear  more 
clearly  if  we  consider  one  or  two  of  the  normal 
religious  acts  of  the  Roman  individual  or  state. 
Take  first  of  all  the  performance  of  the  regular 
sacrifices  or  acts  of  worship  ordained  by  the  state- 
calendar  or  the  celebration  of  the  household  sacra. 
The  pietas  of  man  consists  in  their  due  fulfilment, 
but  he  may  through  negligence  omit  them  or 
make  a  mistake  in  the  ritual  to  be  employed. 
In  that  case  the  gods,  as  it  were,  have  the  upper 
hand  in  the  contract  and  are  not  obliged  to  fulfil 
19 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

their  share :  but  the  man  can  set  himself  right 
again  by  the  offering  of  a  piaculum,  which  may 
take  the  form  either  of  an  additional  sacrifice  or 
a  repetition  of  the  original  rite.  So,  for  instance, 
when  Cato  is  giving  his  farmer  directions  for  the 
lustration  of  his  fields,  he  supplies  him  at  the 
end  with  two  significant  formulae :  '  if,'  he  says, 
'you  have  failed  in  any  respect  with  regard  to 
all  your  offerings,  use  this  formula :  "  Father  Mars, 
if  thou  hast  not  found  satisfaction  in  my  former 
offering  of  pig,  sheep,  and  ox  (the  most  solemn 
combination  in  rustic  sacrifices),  then  let  this 
offering  of  pig  and  sheep  and  ox  appease  thee  " : 
but  if  you  have  made  a  mistake  in  one  or  two 
only  of  your  offerings,  then  say,  "  Father  Mars, 
because  thou  hast  not  found  satisfaction  in  that 
pig  (or  whatever  it  may  be),  let  this  pig  appease 
thee." '  On  the  other  hand,  for  intentional 
neglect,  there  was  no  remedy:  the  man  was 
impius  and  it  rested  with  the  gods  to  punish 
him  as  they  liked  (deorum  iniuriae  dis 
curae). 

But  apart  from  the  regularly  constituted  cere- 
monies of  religion,  there  might  be  special  occasions 
on  which  new  relations  would  be  entered  into 
between  god  and  man.  Sometimes  the  initiative 
would  come  from  man :  desiring  to  obtain  from 
20 


THE  RELIGION  OF  NUMA 

the  gods  some  blessing  on  which  he  had  set  his 
heart,  he  would  enter  into  a  votum,  a  special 
contract  by  which  he  undertook  to  perform  certain 
acts  or  make  certain  sacrifices,  in  case  of  the  ful- 
filment of  his  desire.  The  whole  proceeding  is 
strictly  legal :  from  the  moment  when  he  makes 
his  vow  the  man  is  voti  reus,  in  the  same  position, 
that  is,  as  the  defendant  in  a  case  whose  decision 
is  still  pending ;  as  soon  as  the  gods  have  accom- 
plished their  side  of  the  contract  he  is  voti  dam- 
Tiatus,  condemned,  as  it  were,  to  damages,  having 
lost  his  suit;  nor  does  he  recover  his  independence 
until  he  has  paid  what  he  undertook:  votum 
reddidi  lubens  merito  ('  I  have  paid  my  vow  gladly 
as  it  was  due')  is  the  characteristic  wording  of 
votive  inscriptions.  If  the  gods  did  not  accom- 
plish the  wish,  the  man  was  of  course  free,  and 
sometimes  the  contract  would  be  carried  so  far 
that  a  time-limit  for  their  action  would  be  fixed 
by  the  maker  of  the  vow :  legal  exactness  can 
hardly  go  further. 

Or  again,  the  initiative  might  come  from  the 
gods.  Some  marked  misfortune,  an  earthquake, 
lightning,  a  great  famine,  a  portentous  birth,  or 
some  such  occurrence  would  be  recognised  as  a 
prodigium,  or  sign  of  the  god's  displeasure. 
Somehow  or  other  the  contract  must  have  been 
21 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

broken  on  the  human  side  and  it  was  the  duty  of 
the  state  to  see  to  the  restoration  of  the  pax  deum, 
the  equilibrium  of  the  normal  relation  of  god  and 
man.  The  right  proceeding  in  such  a  case  was  a 
lustratio,  a  solemn  cleansing  of  the  people — or 
the  portion  of  the  people  involved  in  the  god's 
displeasure — with  the  double  object  of  removing 
the  original  reason  of  misfortune  and  averting 
future  causes  of  the  divine  anger.  The  commer- 
cial notion  is  not  perhaps  quite  so  distinct  here, 
but  the  underlying  legal  relationship  is  sufficiently 
marked. 

If  then  the  question  be  asked  whether  the  rela- 
tion between  the  Roman  and  his  gods  was  friendly 
or  unfriendly,  the  correct  answer  would  probably 
be  that  it  was  neither.  It  was  rather  what 
Aristotle  in  speaking  of  human  relations  describes 
as  '  a  friendship  for  profit ' :  it  is  entered  into 
because  both  sides  hope  for  some  advantage — it 
is  maintained  as  long  as  both  sides  fulfil  their 
obligations. 

3.  Ceremonial. — It  has  been  said  sometimes 
that  the  old  Roman  religion  was  one  of  cult  and 
ritual  without  dogma  or  belief.  As  we  have  seen 
this  is  not  in  origin  strictly  true,  and  it  would  be 
fairer  to  say  that  belief  was  latent  rather  than 
non-existent :  this  we  may  see,  for  instance,  from 
22 


THE  RELIGION  OF  NUMA 

Cicero's  dialogues  on  the  subject  of  religion,  where 
in  discussion  the  fundamental  sense  of  the  depen- 
dence of  man  on  the  help  of  the  gods  comes 
clearly  into  view :  in  the  domestic  worship  of  the 
family  too  cult  was  always  to  some  extent '  tinged 
with  emotion/  and  sanctified  by  a  belief  which 
made  it  a  more  living  and  in  the  end  a  more  per- 
manent reality  than  the  religion  of  the  state.  But 
it  is  no  doubt  true  that  as  the  community  ad- 
vanced, belief  tended  to  sink  into  the  background  : 
development  took  place  in  cult  and  not  in  theology, 
so  that  by  the  end  of  the  Republic,  to  take  an 
example,  though  the  festival  of  the  Furrinalia 
was  duly  observed  every  year  on  the  25th  of  July, 
the  nature  or  function  of  the  goddess  Furrina  was, 
as  we  learn  from  Cicero,  a  pure  matter  of  conjec- 
ture, and  Varro  tells  us  that  even  her  name  was 
known  only  to  a  few  persons.  Nor  was  it  mere 
lapse  of  time  which  tended  to  obscure  theology 
and  exalt  ceremonial :  their  relative  position  was 
the  immediate  and  natural  outcome  of  the  under- 
lying idea  of  the  relation  of  god  and  man.  De- 
votion, piety — in  our  sense  of  the  term — and  a 
feeling  of  the  divine  presence  could  not  be  en- 
joined or  even  encouraged  by  the  strictly  legal 
conception  on  which  religion  was  based:  the 
'  contract-notion '  required  not  a  '  right  spirit '  but 
23 


right  performance.  And  so  it  comes  about  that 
in  all  the  records  we  have  left  of  the  old  religion 
the  salient  feature  which  catches  and  retains  our 
attention  is  exactness  of  ritual.  All  must  be  per- 
formed not  merely  'decently  and  in  order,'  but 
with  the  most  scrupulous  care  alike  for  every 
detail  of  the  ceremonial  itself,  and  for  the  surround- 
ing circumstances.  The  omission  or  misplace- 
ment of  a  single  word  in  the  formulae,  the  slight- 
est sign  of  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  victim, 
any  disorder  among  the  bystanders,  even  the 
accidental  squeak  of  a  mouse,  are  sufficient  to 
vitiate  the  whole  ritual  and  necessitate  its  repeti- 
tion from  the  very  beginning.  One  of  the  main 
functions  of  the  Roman  priesthood  was  to  preserve 
intact  the  tradition  of  formulae  and  ritual, 
and,  when  the  magistrate  offered  sacrifice  for 
the  state,  the  pontifex  stood  at  his  side  and 
dictated  (praeire)  the  formulae  which  he  must 
use.  Almost  the  oldest  specimen  of  Latin  which 
we  now  possess  is  the  song  of  the  Salii,  the  priests 
of  Mars,  handed  on  from  generation  to  generation 
and  repeated  with  scrupulous  care,  even  though 
the  priests  themselves,  as  Quintilian  assures  us, 
had  not  the  least  notion  what  it  meant.  Nor  was 
it  merely  the  words  of  ceremonial  which  were 
of  vital  importance :  other  details  must  be  attended 
24 


THE  RELIGION  OF  NUMA 

to  with  equal  exactness.  Place,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  an  essential  feature  even  in  the  conception  of 
deity,  and  it  must  have  required  all  the  personal 
influence  of  Augustus  and  his  -entourage  to  recon- 
cile the  people  of  Rome,  with  the  ancient  home  of 
the  goddess  still  before  their  eyes,  to  the  second 
shrine  of  Vesta  within  the  limits  of  his  palace  on 
the  Palatine.  The  choice  of  the  appropriate  offer- 
ing again  was  a  matter  of  the  greatest  moment  and 
was  dictated  by  a  large  number  of  considerations. 
The  sez  of  the  victim  must  correspond  to  the  sex 
of  the  deity  to  whom  it  is  offered,  white  beasts 
must  be  given  to  the  gods  of  the  upper  world, 
black  victims  to  the  deities  below.  Mars  at  his 
October  festival  must  have  his  horse,  luno  Capro- 
tina  her  goat,  and  Robigus  his  dog,  while  in  the 
more  rustic  festivals  such  as  the  Parilia,  the 
offering  would  be  the  simpler  gift  of  millet- 
cakes  and  bowls  of  milk :  in  the  case  of  the  Bona 
Dea  we  have  the  curious  provision  that  if  wine 
were  used  in  the  ceremonial,  it  must,  as  she  was 
in  origin  a  pastoral  deity,  always  be  spoken  of  as 
'  milk.'  The  persons  who  might  be  present  at  the 
various  festivals  were  also  rigidly  determined : 
men  were  excluded  from  the  Matronalia  on  March 
1,  from  the  Vestalia  on  the  9th  of  June,  and 
from  the  night  festival  of  the  Bona  Dea:  the 
25 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

notorious  escapade  of  Clodius  in  62  B.C.  shows 
the  scandal  raised  by  a  breach  of  this  rule  even  at 
the  period  when  religious  enthusiasm  was  at  its 
lowest  ebb.  Slaves  were  specifically  admitted  to 
a  share  in  certain  festivals  such  as  the  Saturnalia 
and  the  Compitalia  (the  festival  of  the  Lares), 
whereas  at  the  Matralia  (the  festival  of  the 
matrons)  a  female  slave  was  brought  in  with  the 
express  purpose  of  being  significantly  driven 
away. 

The  general  notion  of  the  exactness  of  ritual 
will  perhaps  become  clearer  when  we  come  to 
examine  some  of  the  festivals  in  detail,  but  it  is 
of  extreme  importance  for  the  understanding  of 
the  Roman  religious  attitude,  to  think  of  it  from 
the  first  as  an  essential  part  in  the  expression 
of  the  relation  of  man  to  god. 

4.  Directness  of  Relation — Functions  of  Priests. 
— In  contrast  to  all  this  precision  of  ritual,  which 
tends  almost  to  alienate  humanity  from  deity,  we 
may  turn  to  another  hardly  less  prominent  feature 
of  the  Roman  religion — the  immediateness  of 
relation  between  the  god  and  his  worshippers. 
Not  only  may  the  individual  at  any  time  approach 
the  altar  of  the  god  with  his  prayer  or  thank- 
offering,  but  in  every  community  of  persons  its 
religious  representative  is  its  natural  head.  In 
26 


THE  RELIGION  OF  NUMA 

the  family  the  head  of  the  household  (pater 
familias)  is  also  the  priest  and  he  is  responsible 
for  conducting  the  religious  worship  of  the  whole 
house,  free  and  slave  alike:  to  his  wife  and 
daughters  he  leaves  the  ceremonial  connected 
with  the  hearth  (Vesta)  and  the  deities  of  the 
store-cupboard  (Penates),  and  to  his  bailiff  the 
sacrifice  to  the  powers  who  protect  his  fields 
(Lares),  but  the  other  acts  of  worship  at  home  and 
in  the  fields  he  conducts  himself,  and  his  sons  act 
as  his  acolytes.  Once  a  year  he  meets  with  his 
neighbours  at  the  boundaries  of  their  properties 
and  celebrates  the  common  worship  over  the 
boundary-stones.  So  in l  the  larger  outgrowth  of 
the  family,  the  gens,  which  consisted  of  all  persons 
with  the  same  surname  (nomen,  not  cognomen), 
the  gentile  sacra  are  in  the  hands  of  the  more 
wealthy  members  who  are  regarded  as  its  heads ; 
we  have  the  curious  instance  of  Clodius  even  after 
his  adoption  into  another  family,  providing  for  the 
worship  of  the  gens  Clodia  in  his  own  house,  and 
we  may  remember  Virgil's  picture  of  the  founders 
of  the  gentes  of  the  Potitii  and  the  Pinarii  per- 
forming the  sacrifice  to  Hercules  at  the  ara 
maxima,  which  was  the  traditional  privilege  of 

1  This  is  all  open  to  doubt,  but  see  De  Marchi,  H  Culto 
Private/,  vol.  ii. 

27 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

their  houses.  When  societies  (sodalitates)  are 
formed  for  religious  purposes  they  elect  their 
own  magistri  to  be  their  religious  representatives, 
as  we  see  in  the  case  of  the  Salii  and  the  Luperci. 
Finally,  in  the  great  community  of  the  state  the 
king  is  priest,  and  with  that  exactness  of  paral- 
lelism of  which  the  Roman  was  so  fond,  he — like 
the  pater  familias — leaves  the  worship  of  Vesta 
in  the  hands  of  his  '  daughters,'  the  Vestal  virgins. 
And  so,  when  the  Republic  is  instituted,  a  special 
official,  the  rex  sacrorum,  inherits  the  king's 
ritual  duties,  while  the  superintendence  of  the 
Vestals  passes  to  his  representative  in  the  matter  of 
religious  law,  the  pontifex  maximus,  whose  official 
residence  is  always  the  regia,  Numa's  palace. 
The  state  is  but  the  enlarged  household  and  the 
head  of  the  state  is  its  religious  representative. 

If  then  the  approach  to  the  gods  is  so  direct, 
where,  it  may  be  asked,  in  the  organisation  of 
Roman  religion  is  there  room  for  the  priest  ?  Two 
points  about  the  Roman  priesthood  are  of  para- 
mount importance.  In  the  first  place,  they  are  not  a 
caste  apart :  though  there  were  restrictions  as  to 
the  holding  of  secular  magistracies  in  combination 
with  the  priesthood — always  observed  strictly  in 
the  case  of  the  rex  sacrorum  and  with  few  ex- 
ceptions in  the  case  of  the  greater  ftamines — 

28 


THE  RELIGION  OF  NUMA 

yet  the  pontifices  might  always  take  their  part 
in  public  life,  and  no  kind  of  barrier  existed 
between  them  and  the  rest  of  the  community: 
lulius  Caesar  himself  was  pontifex  maximus.  In 
the  second  place  they  are  not  regarded  as  repre- 
sentatives of  the  gods  or  as  mediators  between 
god  and  man,  but  simply  as  administrative  officials 
appointed  for  the  performance  of  the  acts  of  state- 
worship,  just  as  the  magistrates  were  for  its  civil 
and  military  government.  In  origin  they  were 
chosen  to  assist  the  king  in  the  multifarious  duties 
of  the  state-cult — iheflamines  were  to  act  as  special 
priests  of  particular  deities,  the  most  prominent 
among  them  being  the  three  great  priests  of 
luppiter  (flamen  Dialis),  Mars,  and  Quirinus ; 
the  pontifices  were  sometimes  delegates  of  the 
king  on  special  occasions,  but  more  particularly 
formed  his  religious  consilium,  a  consulting  body, 
to  give  him  advice  as  to  ritual  and  act  as  the  re- 
positories of  tradition.  In  later  times  \heflamines 
still  retain  their  original  character,  the  pontifices 
and  especially  the  pontifex  maximus  are  respons- 
ible for  the  whole  organisation  of  the  state-religion 
and  are  the  guardians  and  interpreters  of  religious 
lore.  In  the  state-cult  then  the  priests  play  a  very 
important  part,  but  their  relation  to  the  worship 
of  the  individual  was  very  small  indeed.  They  had 
29 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

a  general  superintendence  over  private  worship 
and  their  leave  would  be  required  for  the  intro- 
duction of  any  new  domestic  cult;  in  cases  too 
where  the  private  person  was  in  doubt  as  to  ritual 
or  the  legitimacy  of  any  religious  practice,  he 
could  appeal  to  the  pontifices  for  decision.  Other- 
wise the  priest  could  never  intervene  in  the  worship 
of  the  family,  except  in  the  case  of  the  most 
solemn  form  of  marriage  (confarreatio),  which,  as 
it  conferred  on  the  children  the  right  to  hold 
certain  of  the  priesthoods,  was  regarded  itself  as 
a  ceremony  of  the  state-religion. 

In  his  private  worship  then  the  individual  had 
immediate  access  to  the  deity,  and  it  was  no  doubt 
this  absence  of  priestly  mediation  and  the  con- 
sequent sense  of  personal  responsibility,  no  less 
than  its  emotional  significance,  which  caused  the 
greater  reality  and  permanence  of  the  domestic 
worship  as  compared  with  the  organised  and 
official  cults  of  the  state. 


CHAPTER  IV 

EARLY   HISTORY   OF   ROME — THE  AGRICULTURAL 
COMMUNITY 

AFTER  this  sketch  of  the  main  features  which 
we  must  expect  to  find  in  Roman  religion,  we 
may  attempt  to  look  a  little  more  in  detail  at 
its  various  departments,  but  before  doing  so  it  is 
necessary  to  form  some  notion  of  the  situation 
and  character  of  the  Roman  community :  religion 
is  not  a  little  determined  by  men's  natural  sur- 
roundings and  occupations.  The  subject  is  natur- 
ally one  of  considerable  controversy,  but  certain 
facts  of  great  significance  for  our  purpose  may 
fairly  be  taken  as  established.  The  earliest  settle- 
ment which  can  be  called  '  Rome '  was  the  com- 
munity of  the  Palatine  hill,  which  rises  out  of 
the  valleys  more  abruptly  than  any  of  the  other 
hills  and  was  the  natural  place  to  be  selected  for 
fortification:  the  outline  of  the  walls  and  the 
sacred  enclosure  running  outside  them  (pomoe- 
rium)  may  still  be  traced,  marking  the  limits 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

of  '  square  Rome '  (Roma  quadrata),  as  the  his- 
torians  called  it.     The  Palatine   community  no 
doubt  pursued  their  agricultural  labours  over  the 
neighbouring  valleys  and  hills,  and  gradually  began 
to   extend  their  settlement  till  it  included  the 
Esquiline  and  Caelian  and  other  lesser  heights 
which  made  up  the  Septimontium — the  next  stage 
of  Rome's   development.     Meanwhile  a  kindred 
settlement  had  been  established  on  the  opposite 
hills  of  the  Quirinal  and  Viminal,  and  ultimately 
the  two  communities  united,  enclosing  within  their 
boundaries  the  Capitol  and  their  meeting-place  in 
the  valley  which  separated  them — the  Forum.     In 
this  way  was  formed  the  Rome  of  the  Four  Regions, 
which  represents  the  utmost  extent  of  its  develop- 
ment during  the  period  which  gave  rise  to  the 
genuine  Roman  religion.    All  these  stages  have 
left  their  mark  on  the  customs  of  religion.    Roma 
quadrata  comes  to  the  fore  in  the  Lupercalia: 
not  merely  is  the  site  of  the  ceremony  a  grotto 
on  the  Palatine  (Lupercal),  but  when  the  Luperci 
run  their  purificatory  course  around  the  bound- 
aries, it  is  the  circuit  of  the  Palatine  hill  which 
marks  its  limits.     Annually  on  the  llth  of  De- 
cember  the  festival   of   the   Septimontium   was 
celebrated,  not  by  the  whole  people,  but  by  the 
montani,  presumably   the   inhabitants  of  those 
32 


THE  AGRICULTURAL  COMMUNITY 

parts  of  Rome  which  were  included  in  the  second 
settlement.  Finally,  the  addition  of  the  Quirinal 
settlement  is  marked  by  the  inclusion  among  the 
great  state-gods  of  Quirinus,  who  must  have  been 
previously  the  local  deity  of  the  Quirinal  com- 
munity. 

But  more  important  for  us  than  the  history  of 
the  early  settlement  is  its  character.  We  have 
spoken  of  early  Rome  as  an  agricultural  com- 
munity :  it  would  be  more  exact  and  more  helpful 
to  describe  it  as  a  community  of  agricultural 
households.  The  institutions  of  Rome,  legal  as 
well  as  religious,  all  point  to  the  household 
(familia)  as  the  original  unit  of  organisation: 
the  individual,  as  such,  counted  for  nothing,  the 
community  was  but  the  aggregate  of  families. 
Domestic  worship  then  was  not  merely  indepen- 
dent of  the  religion  of  the  community:  it  was 
prior  to  it,  and  is  both  its  historical  and  logical 
origin.  Yet  the  life  of  the  early  Roman  agricul- 
turalist could  not  be  confined  to  the  household : 
in  the  tilling  of  the  fields  and  the  care  of  his  cattle 
he  meets  his  neighbours,  and  common  interests 
suggest  common  prayer  and  thanksgiving.  Thus 
there  sprung  up  the  great  series  of  agricultural 
festivals  which  form  the  basis  of  the  state- 
calendar,  but  were  in  origin — as  some  of  them 

c  33 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

still  continued  to  be — the  independent  acts  of 
worship  of  groups  of  agricultural  households. 
Gradually,  as  the  community  grew  on  the  lines 
we  have  just  seen,  there  grew  with  it  a  sense 
of  an  organised  state,  as  something  more  than 
the  casual  aggregation  of  households  or  clans 
(gentes).  As  the  feeling  of  union  became  stronger, 
so  did  the  necessity  for  common  worship  of  the 
gods,  and  the  state-cult  came  into  being  primarily 
as  the  repetition  on  behalf  of  the  community 
as  a  whole  of  the  worship  which  its  members 
performed  separately  in  their  households  or  as 
joint- worshippers  in  the  fields.  But  the  concep- 
tion of  a  state  must  carry  with  it  at  least  two 
ideas  over  and  beyond  the  common  needs  of  its 
members :  there  must  be  internal  organisation 
to  secure  domestic  tranquillity,  and — since  there 
will  be  collision  with  other  states  —  external 
organisation  for  purposes  of  offence  and  defence. 
Religion  follows  the  new  ideas,  and  in  two  of 
the  older  deities  of  the  fields  develops  the  notions 
of  justice  and  war.  Organisation  ensues,  and  the 
general  conceptions  of  state-deities  and  state-ritual 
are  made  more  definite  and  precise. 

It  will  be  at  once  natural  and  convenient  that 
we  should  consider  these  three  departments  of 
religion  in  the  order  that  has  just  been  suggested — 
34 


THE  AGRICULTURAL  COMMUNITY 

the  worship  of  the  household,  the  worship  of  the 
fields,  the  worship  of  the  state.  But  it  must  not 
be  forgotten  that  both  the  departments  themselves 
and  the  evidence  for  them  frequently  overlap. 
The  domestic  worship  is  not  wholly  distinguish- 
able from  that  of  the  fields,  the  state-cult  is,  as 
we  have  seen,  very  largely  a  replica  of  the  other 
two.  The  evidence  for  the  domestic  and  agri- 
cultural cults  is  in  itself  very  scanty,  and  we 
shall  frequently  have  to  draw  inferences  from 
their  counterparts  in  the  state.  Above  all,  it  is 
not  to  be  supposed  that  any  hard  and  fast  line 
between  the  three  existed  in  the  Roman's  mind  ; 
but  for  the  purposes  of  analysis  the  distinction  is 
valuable  and  represents  a  historical  reality. 


35 


CHAPTER  V 

WORSHIP  OF  THE   HOUSEHOLD 

1.  The  Deities. — The  worship  of  the  household 
seems  to  have  originated,  as  has  been  suggested, 
in  the  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  certain  objects 
closely  bound  up  with  the  family  life — the  door, 
the  protection  against  the  external  world,  by  which 
the  household  went  out  to  work  in  the  morning 
and  returned  at  evening,  the  hearth,  the  giver  of 
warmth  and  nourishment,  and  the  store-cupboard, 
where  was  preserved  the  food  for  future  use.  At 
first,  in  all  probability,  the  worship  was  actually 
of  the  objects  themselves,  but  by  the  time  that 
Rome  can  be  said  to  have  existed  at  all, '  animism ' 
had  undoubtedly  transformed  it  into  a  veneration 
of  the  indwelling  spirits,  lanus,  Vesta,  and  the 
Penates. 

Of  the  domestic  worship  of  lanus  no  information 

has  come  down  to  us,  but  we  may  well  suppose 

that  as  the  defence  of  the  door  and  its  main  use 

lay  with  the  men  of  the  household,  so  they,  under 

36 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

the  control  of  the  pater  familias,  were  responsible 
for  the  cult  of  its  spirit.  Vesta  was,  of  course, 
worshipped  at  the  hearth  by  the  women,  who 
most  often  used  it  in  the  preparation  of  the 
domestic  meals.  In  the  original  round  hut,  such 
as  the  primitive  Roman  dwelt  in — witness  the 
models  which  he  buried  with  his  dead  and  which 
recent  excavations  in  the  Forum  have  brought 
to  light — the  '  blazing  hearth '  (such  seems  to 
be  the  meaning  of  Vesta)  would  be  the  most 
conspicuously  sacred  thing ;  it  is  therefore  not 
surprising  to  find  that  her  simple  cult  was  the 
most  persistent  of  all  throughout  the  history  of 
Rome,  and  did  not  vary  from  its  original  notion. 
Even  Ovid  can  tell  the  inquirer  '  think  not  Vesta 
to  be  ought  else  than  living  flame,'  and  again, 
'  Vesta  and  fire  require  no  effigy ' — notions  in  which 
he  has  come  curiously  near  to  the  conceptions  of 
the  earliest  religion.  The  Penates  in  the  same 
way  were  at  first  'the  spirits' — whoever  they 
might  be — who  preserved  and  increased  the  store 
in  the  cupboard.  Then  as  the  conception  of 
individual  deities  became  clearer,  they  were  iden- 
tified with  some  one  or  other  of  the  gods  of  the 
country  or  the  state,  among  whom  the  individual 
householder  would  select  those  who  should  be 
the  particular  Penates  of  his  family :  Ceres,  luno, 
37 


THE  KELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

luppiter,  Pales  would  be  some  of  those  chosen  in 
the  earlier  period.  Nor  are  we  to  suppose  that 
selection  was  merely  arbitrary :  the  tradition  of 
family  and  clan,  even  possibly  of  locality,  would 
determine  the  choice,  much  as  the  patron-saints 
of  a  church  are  now  determined  in  a  Roman 
Catholic  country. 

Two  other  deities  are  very  prominent  in  the 
worship  of  the  early  household,  and  each  is  a  char- 
acteristic product  of  Roman  religious  feeling,  the 
Lar  Familiaris  and  the  Genius.  1  The  Lares  seem 
to  have  been  in  origin  the  spirits  of  the  family 
fields:  they  were  worshipped,  as  Cicero  tells  us, 
'  on  the  farm  in  sight  of  the  house/  and  they  had 
their  annual  festival  in  the  Compitalia,  celebrated 
at  the  compita — places  where  two  or  more  pro- 
perties marched.  But  one  of  these  spirits,  the 
Lar  Familiaris,  had  special  charge  of  the  house 
and  household,  and  as  such  was  worshipped  with 
the  other  domestic  gods  at  the  hearth.  As  his 
protection  extended  over  all  the  household,  in- 
cluding the  slaves,  his  cult  is  placed  specially  in 
the  charge  of  the  bailiff's  wife  (vilica).  He  is 


1  Tt  is  right  to  state  that  there  is  a  totally  different  theory, 
according  to  which  the  Lares  were  the  spirits  of  the  dead 
ancestors  and  the  Lar  Familiaris  an  embodiment,  as  it  were,  of 
all  the  family  dead. 

33 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

regularly  worshipped  at  the  great  divisions  of 
the  month  on  Calends,  Nones,  and  Ides,  but  he 
has  also  an  intimate  and  beautiful  connection 
with  the  domestic  history  of  the  family.  An  offer- 
ing is  made  to  the  Lar  on  the  occasion  of  a  birth, 
a  wedding,  a  departure,  or  a  return,  and  even — a 
characteristically  Roman  addition — on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  first  utterance  of  a  word  by  a  son  of 
the  house  :  finally,  a  particularly  solemn  sacrifice 
is  made  to  him  after  a  death  in  the  family. 

The  Genius  is  perhaps  the  most  difficult  con- 
ception in  the  Roman  religion  for  the  modern 
mind  to  grasp.  It  has  been  spoken  of  as  the 
'patron-saint'  or  'guardian-angel,'  both  of  them 
conceptions  akin  to  that  of  the  Genius,  but  both 
far  too  definite  and  anthropomorphic:  we  shall 
understand  it  best  by  keeping  the  '  numen '  notion 
clearly  in  mind  and  looking  to  the  root-meaning 
of  the  word  (genius  connected  with  the  root  of 
gignere,  to  beget).  It  was  after  all  only  a  natural 
development  of  the  notions  of  '  animism '  to 
imagine  that  man  too,  like  other  objects,  had 
his  indwelling  spirit — not  his  '  soul '  either  in  our 
sense  of  moral  and  intellectual  powers,  or  in  the 
ancient  sense  of  the  vital  principle — but  rather, 
as  the  derivation  suggests,  in  origin  simply  the 
spirit  which  gave  him  the  power  of  generation. 
39 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

Hence  in  the  house,  the  sphere  of  the  Genius  is 
no  longer  the  hearth  but  the  marriage-bed  (lectus 
genialis).     This  notion  growing  somewhat  wider, 
the  Genius  comes  to  denote  all  the  full  powers, 
almost   the  personality,  of  developed  manhood, 
and    especially    those   powers    which    make   for 
pleasure   and    happiness :    this  is   the   origin   of 
such  common  phrases  as  genium  curare,  genio 
indulgere,  meaning  practically  to  '  look  after  one- 
self,' '  to  indulge  oneself.'     Every  man,  then,  has 
this  'spirit  of  his  manhood'  in  his  Genius,  and 
correspondingly  every  woman  her  luno,  or  spirit 
of  womanhood,  which  are  worshipped  on  the  birth- 
days of  their  owners.     No  doubt  later  the  Genius 
was  accredited  with  powers  over  the  fortune  and 
misfortune  of  his  possessor,  but  he  never  really 
developed  anything  like  the  independence  of  a  god, 
and  remained  always  rather  a  num,en.     The.  in- 
dividual revered  his  own  Genius,  but  the  house- 
hold cult  was  concerned,  as  one  would  expect, 
with  the  Genius  of  the  master  of  the  house,  the 
pre-eminent  Genius  of  the  family.     Its  special 
locality  was,  for  the    reason   just   noticed,   the 
marriage-bed  and   its   symbol,  the  house-snake, 
kept  as  a  revered  inmate  and  cherished  in  the 
feeling  that  evil  happening  to  it  meant  misfortune 
to  the  master.     The  festival  of  the  Genius  was 
40 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

naturally  the  master's  birthday,  and  on  that  day 
slaves  and  freedmen  kept  holiday  with  the  family 
and  brought  offerings  to  the  Genius  domus.  It 
is  a  significant  fact,  and  may  serve  to  bring  out 
the  underlying  notion,  that  in  later  paintings, 
when  anthropomorphism  and  sensuous  repre- 
sentation held  sway  over  all  Roman  religion, 
though  the  other  gods  of  the  household  were 
depicted  after  the  manner  of  Greek  deities,  the 
Genius  is  either  represented  by  his  symbolic 
snake  or  appears  with  the  human  features  and 
characteristics  of  the  head  of  the  house,  his 
owner. 

The  spirit-gods  then  of  the  door  and  the  hearth, 
the  specially  chosen  deities  of  the  store-cupboard, 
the  particular  field-power  presiding  over  the  house- 
hold, and  the  spirit  of  the  master's  personality 
were  the  gods  of  the  early  home,  and  round  their 
worship  centred  the  domestic  religion.  We  must 
attempt  to  see  what  was  its  relation  to  family 
life. 

2.  Religion  and  the  Family  Life. — We  have 
already  noticed  the  main  occasions  of  regular  sacri- 
fice to  the  deities  of  the  household,  the  offerings  to 
the  Lar  on  Calends,  Nones,  and  Ides,  to  the  Genius 
on  the  master's  birthday,  and  so  on,  and  we  are 
enabled  to  form  a  fair  picture  of  the  rites  from 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

paintings  which,  although  of  later  date,  undoubt- 
edly represent  the  continuous  tradition  of  domestic 
custom.  In  a  wall-painting  at  Herculaneum,  for 
instance,  we  have  a  picture  of  the  pater  familias, 
represented  with  veiled  head  (according  to  regular 
Roman  custom)  and  the  cornucopia  of  the  Genius, 
making  sacrifice  at  a  round  altar  or  hearth.  Op- 
posite him  stands  the  flute-player  (tibicen)  playing 
to  drown  any  unpropitious  sound,  while  on  either 
side  are  two  smaller  figures,  presumably  the  sons, 
acting  as  attendants  (camilli),  and  both  clad 
(succincti)  in  the  short  sacrificial  tunic  (limus) ; 
one  carries  in  his  left  hand  the  sacred  dish 
(patera),  and  in  his  right  garlands  or,  more 
probably,  ribbons  for  the  decoration  of  the  victim  : 
the  other  is  acting  as  victimarius  and  bringing 
the  pig  for  sacrifice,  but  the  animal  is  hurrying 
with  almost  excessive  eagerness  towards  the  altar, 
no  doubt  to  show  that  there  is  none  of  the  re- 
luctance which  would  have  been  sufficient  to 
vitiate  the  sacrifice. 

But  from  our  point  of  view  such  formal  acts 
of  worship  are  of  less  importance  than  the  part 
played  by  religion  in  the  daily  life  of  the  house- 
hold. There  is  evidence  both  for  earlier  and 
later  periods  that  the  really  '  pious '  would  begin 
their  day  with  prayer  and  sacrifice  to  the  house- 
42 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

hold  gods,  and  like  Virgil's  Aeneas,  typically  pins 
in  all  the  meanings  of  the  word,  would  'rouse 
the  slumbering  flame  upon  the  altar  and  gladly 
approach  again  the  Lar  and  little  Penates  whom 
he  worshipped  yesterday.'  But  this  was  perhaps 
exceptional  devotion,  and  the  daily  worship  in 
the  normal  household  centred  rather  round  the 
family  meal.  In  the  old  and  simple  house  the 
table  would  be  placed  at  the  side  of  the  hearth, 
and,  as  the  household  sat  round  it,  master  and 
man  together,  a  part  of  the  meal,  set  aside  on 
a  special  sacred  dish  (patella),  would  be  thrown 
into  the  flames  as  the  gods'  portion.  Sometimes 
incense  might  be  added,  and  later  a  libation  of 
wine :  when  images  had  become  common,  the  little 
statuettes  of  Lares  and  Penates  would  be  fetched 
from  the  shrine  (lararium)  and  placed  upon  the 
table  in  token  of  their  presence  at  the  meal. 
Even  in  the  luxurious,  many-roomed  house  of 
the  imperial  epoch,  when  the  dining- table  was 
far  from  the  kitchen-hearth,  a  pause  was  made 
in  the  meal  and  an  offering  sent  out  to  the 
household-gods,  nor  would  the  banquet  proceed 
until  the  slave  had  returned  and  announced  that 
the  gods  were  favourable  (deos  propitios):  so 
persistent  was  this  tradition  of  domestic  piety. 
Prayer  might  be  made  at  this  point  on  special 

43 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

occasions  to  special  deities,  as,  for  instance,  before 
the  beginning  of  the  sowing  of  the  crops,  appeal 
was  made  to  luppiter,  and  a  special  portion  of 
the  meal  (daps)  was  set  aside  for  him.  The 
sanctification  of  the  one  occasion  when  the  whole 
household  inet  in  the  day  cannot  fail  to  have  had 
its  effect  on  the  domestic  life,  and,  even  if  it  was 
no  direct  incentive  to  morality,  it  yet  bound  the 
family  together  in  a  sense  of  dependence  on  a 
higher  power  for  the  supply  of  their  daily 
needs. 

We  observed  incidentally  how  the  small  events 
of  domestic  life  were  given  their  religious  signi- 
ficance, particularly  in  connection  with  the  worship 
of  Lar  and  Genius,  but  to  complete  the  sketch 
of  domestic  religion,  we  must  examine  a  little 
more  closely  its  relation  to  the  process  of  life, 
and  especially  to  the  two  important  occasions 
of  birth  and  marriage.  In  no  department  of 
life  is  the  specialisation  of  function  among  the 
numina  more  conspicuous  than  in  connection 
with  birth  and  childhood.  Apart  from  the  general 
protection  of  luno  Lucina,  the  prominent  divinity 
of  childbirth,  we  can  count  in  the  records  that 
have  come  down  to  us  some  twenty  subordinate 
spirits,  who  from  the  moment  of  conception  to 
the  moment  of  birth  watched,  each  in  its  own 
44 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

particular  sphere,  over  the  mother  and  the  un- 
born child.  As  soon  as  the  birth  had  taken 
place  began  a  series  of  ceremonies,  which  are  of 
particular  interest,  as  they  seem  to  belong  to  a 
very  early  stage  of  religious  thought,  and  have 
a  markedly  rustic  character.  Immediately  a 
sacred  meal  was  offered  to  the  two  field-deities, 
Picumnus  and  Pilumnus,  and  then  the  Roman 
turned  his  attention  to  the  practical  danger  of 
fever  for  the  mother  and  child.  At  night  three 
men  gathered  round  the  threshold,  one  armed 
with  an  axe,  another  with  a  stake,  and  a  third 
with  a  broom :  the  two  first  struck  the  threshold 
with  their  implements,  the  third  swept  out  the 
floor.  Over  this  ceremony  were  said  to  preside 
three  numina,  Intercidona  (connected  with  the 
axe),  Pilumnus  (connected  with  the  stake,  pilum), 
and  Deverra  (connected  with  the  act  of  sweeping). 
Its  object  was,  as  Varro  explains  it,  to  avert 
the  entrance  of  the  half- wild  Silvanus  by  giving 
three  umnistakeable  signs  of  human  civilisation ; 
we  shall  probably  not  be  wrong  in  seeing  in  it 
rather  an  actual  hacking,  beating,  and  sweeping 
away  of  evil  spirits.  On  the  ninth  day  after 
birth,  in  the  case  of  a  boy,  on  the  eighth  in  the 
case  of  a  girl,  occurred  the  festival  of  the  naming 
(solemnitas  nominalium).  The  ceremony  was 
45 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

one  of  purification  (dies  lustricus  is  its  alter- 
native title),  and  a  piacular  offering  was  made 
to  preserve  the  child  from  evil  influences  in 
the  future.  Friends  brought  presents,  especially 
neck-bands  in  the  form  of  a  half-moon  (lunulae), 
and  the  golden  balls  (bullae)  which  were  worn  as 
a  charm  round  the  neck  until  the  attainment  of 
manhood. 

Of  the  numerous  petty  divinities  which  watched 
over  the  child's  early  years  we  have  already  given 
some  account.  In  their  protection  he  remained 
until  he  arrived  at  puberty,  about  the  age  of 
seventeen,  when  with  due  religious  ceremony  he 
entered  on  his  manhood.  At  home,  on  the  morn- 
ing of  the  festival,  he  solemnly  laid  aside  the 
bulla  and  the  purple-striped  garb  of  childhood 
(toga  praetexta)  before  the  shrine  of  the  house- 
hold gods,  and  made  them  a  thank-offering  for 
their  protection  in  the  past.  Afterwards,  accom- 
panied by  his  father  and  friends  and  clad  now  in 
the  toga  virilis,  he  went  solemnly  to  the  Capitol, 
and,  after  placing  a  contribution  in  the  coffers  of 
luventas — or  probably  in  earlier  times  of  luppiter 
luventus — made  an  offering  to  the  supreme  deity 
luppiter  Capitolinus.  The  sacred  character  of  the 
early  years  of  a  young  Roman's  life  could  hardly 
be  more  closely  marked. 
46 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

Though  confarreatio  was  the  only  essentially 
religious  form  of  marriage,  and  was  sanctified  by 
the  presence  of  the  pontifex  maximus  and  the 
flamen  Dialis,  yet  marriage  even  in  the  less 
religious  ceremony  of  coemptio  was  always  a 
sacrum.  It  must  not  take  place  on  the  days 
of  state-festivals  (feriae),  nor  on  certain  other 
dies  religiosi,  such  as  those  of  the  Vestalia  or 
the  feast  of  the  dead  (Parentalia).  Both  the 
marriage  itself  and  the  preliminary  betrothal 
(sponsalia)  had  to  receive  the  divine  sanction 
by  means  of  auspices,  and  in  the  ceremonies  of 
both  rites  the  religious  element,  though  bound 
up  with  superstition  and  folk-customs,  emerges 
clearly  enough.  The  central  ceremony  of  the 
confarreatio  was  an  act  partly  of  sacrifice,  partly, 
one  might  almost  say,  of  communion.  The  bride 
and  bridegroom  sat  on  two  chairs  united  to  one 
another  and  covered  with  a  lambskin,  they  offered 
to  luppiter  bloodless  offerings  of  a  rustic  char- 
acter (fruges  et  molam  salsam),  they  employed 
in  the  sacrifice  the  fundamental  household  neces- 
saries, water,  fire,  and  salt,  and  themselves  ate  of 
the  sacred  spelt-cake  (libus  farreus),  from  which 
the  ceremony  derived  its  name.  The  crucial 
point  in  the  more  civil  ceremony  of  coemptio 
was  the  purely  human  and  legal  act  of  the 
47 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

joining    of    hands   (dextrarum    iunctio),  but  it 
was  immediately  followed  by  the  sacrifice  of  a 
victim,   which   gave   the  ceremony  a   markedly 
religious   significance.      The   customs   connected 
with  the  bringing   of   the  bride   to   the  bride- 
groom's   house  —  so     beautifully     depicted     in 
Catullus'  Epithalamium — her  forcible  abduction 
from  her  parents,  the  ribaldry  of  the  bridegroom's 
companions,  the  throwing  of  nuts  as  a  symbol 
of  fecundity,  the  carrying  of  the  bride  over  the 
threshold,  a  relic  probably  of  primitive  marriage 
by  capture,  the  untying  of  the  bridal  knot  on 
the   bridal   couch  —  are  perhaps   more   akin   to 
superstition   than  religion,  but   we   may   notice 
two  points  in  the  proceedings.     Firstly,  the  three 
coins  (asses)  which  the  bride  brought  with  her, 
one  to  give  to  her  husband  as  a  token  of  dowry, 
one  to  be  offered  at  the  hearth  to  her  new  Lar 
Familiaris,  one  to  be  offered  subsequently  at  the 
nearest  compitum  (a  clear  sign   of    connection 
between   the   household   Lar   and    those  of  the 
fields);    and  secondly,   an   echo  of  the  feature 
so  marked  all  through  domestic  life,  the  crowd 
of  little  numina,  who  took  their  part  in  assisting 
the  ceremony.    There  was  Domiduca,  who  brought 
the  bride  to  the  bridegroom's   house,   Iterduca, 
who  looked  after  her  on  the  transit,  Unxia,  who 
48 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

anointed  her,  Cinxia,  who  bound  and  unbound 
her  girdle,  and  many  others. 

This  sketch  of  the  household  worship  of  the 
Romans  will,  I  hope,  have  justified  my  contention 
that  there  was  in  it  an  element  more  truly 
'  religious '  than  anything  we  should  gather  from 
the  ceremonies  of  the  state.  The  ideas  are  simpler, 
the  numina  seem  less  cold  and  more  protec- 
tive, the  worshippers  more  sensible  of  divine  aid. 
When  we  have  looked  at  the  companion  picture 
of  the  farmer  in  the  fields,  we  shall  go  on  to  see 
how  the  worship  of  the  agricultural  household  is 
the  prototype  and  basis  of  the  state-cult,  but  first 
we  must  consider  briefly  the  very  difficult  ques- 
tion of  the  relation  of  the  living  to  the  dead. 

3.  Relation  of  the  Living  and  the  Dead. — The 
worship  of  the  spirits  of  dead  ancestors  is  so 
common  a  feature  in  most  primitive  religions 
that  it  may  seem  strange  even  to  doubt  whether 
it  existed  among  the  Romans,  but,  although  the 
question  is  one  of  extreme  difficulty,  and  the 
evidence  very  insufficient,  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
that,  though  the  living  were  always  conscious  of 
their  continued  relation  to  the  dead,  and  sensitive 
of  the  influence  of  the  powers  of  the  underworld, 
yet  there  was  not,  strictly  speaking,  any  cult  of 
the  dead.  Let  us  attempt  briefly  to  collect  the 
D  49 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

salient  features  in  ritual,  and  see  to  what  conclu- 
sion they  point  as  to  the  underlying  belief. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  in  domestic 
worship  is  that,  whereas  the  moment  of  birth  and 
the  other  great  occasions  of  life  are  surrounded 
with  religious  ceremony  and  belief,  the  moment 
of  death  passes  without  any  trace  of  religious 
accompaniment:  it  is  as  though  the  dying  man 
went  out  into  another  world  where  the  ceremonials 
of  this  life  can  no  more  avail  him,  nor  its  gods 
protect  him.  As  to  his  state  after  death,  opinion 
varied  at  different  times  under  different  influences, 
but  the  simple  early  notion,  connected  especially 
with  the  practice  of  burial  as  opposed  to  crema- 
tion,1 was  that  his  spirit  just  sank  into  the  earth, 
where  it  rested  and  returned  from  time  to  time  to 
the  upper  world  through  certain  openings  in  the 
ground  (mundi),  whose  solemn  uncovering  was 
one  of  the  regular  observances  of  the  festal 
calendar :  later,  no  doubt,  a  more  spiritual  notion 
prevailed,  though  it  never  reached  definiteness  or 
universality.  One  idea,  however,  seems  always  to 
be  prominent,  that  the  happiness  of  the  dead 
could  be  much  affected  by  the  dae  performance 

1  It  is  significant  that,  even  when  the  dead  were  cremated, 
one  bone  was  carefully  preserved  in  order  to  be  symbolically 
buried. 

50 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

of  the  funeral  rites  ;  hence  it  was  the  most  solemn 
duty  of  the  heir  to  perform  the  iusta  for  the 
dead,  and  if  he  failed  in  any  respect  to  carry  them 
out,  he  could  only  atone  for  his  omission  by  the 
annual  sacrifice  of  a  sow  (porca  praecidanea)  to 
Ceres  and  Tellus — to  the  divinities  of  the  earth, 
be  it  noticed,  and  not  to  the  dead  themselves.    The 
actual  funeral  was  not  a  religious  ceremony;  a 
procession  was  formed  (originally  at  night)  of  the 
family  and  friends,  in  which  the  body  of  the  dead 
was  carried — accompanied  by  the  busts  (imagines) 
of  his  ancestors — to  a  tomb  outside  the  town,  and 
was  there  laid  in  the  grave.     The  family  on  their 
return  proceeded  at  once  to  rites  of  purification 
from   the   contamination  which    had    overtaken 
them   owing   to   the  presence  of  a  dead   body. 
Two   ceremonies   were    performed,   one    for    the 
purification  of  the  house  by  the  sacrifice  of  a  sow 
(porca  praesentanea)  to  Ceres  accompanied  by  a 
solemn  sweeping  out  of  refuse  (exverrce),  the  other 
the  lustration  of  their  own  persons  by  fire  and 
water.      This   done,   they   sat  down   with   their 
friends  to  a  funeral  feast  (silicemium),  which, 
Cicero  tells  us,  was  regarded  as  an  honour  rather 
to  the  surviving  members  of  the  family  than  to 
the  dead,  so  that  mourning  was  not  worn.     Two 
other  ceremonies  within  the  following  week,  the 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

feriae  denicales  and  the  novendiale  sacrum, 
brought  the  religious  mourning  to  a  close.  Not 
that  the  dead  were  forgotten  after  the  funeral : 
year  by  year,  on  the  anniversaries  of  death  and 
burial,  and  on  certain  fixed  occasions  known  by 
such  suggestive  titles  as  'the  day  of  roses'  and 
'  the  day  of  violets,'  the  family  would  revisit  the 
tomb  and  make  simple  offerings  of  salt  cake 
(mola  salsa),  of  bread  soaked  in  wine,  or  garlands 
of  flowers :  there  is  some  trace,  on  such  occasions, 
of  prayer,  but  it  would  seem  to  be  rather  the 
repetition  of  general  religious  formulae  than  a 
petition  to  the  dead  for  definite  blessings. 

Such  are  the  principal  features  of  the  family 
ritual  in  relation  to  their  dead ;  but  if  we  are  to 
form  any  just  notion  of  belief,  we  must  supple- 
ment them  by  reference  to  the  ceremonies  of  the 
state,  which  here,  as  elsewhere,  are  very  clearly 
the  household-cult  'writ  large.'  In  the  Calendars 
we  find  two  obvious  celebrations  in  connection 
with  the  dead,  taking  place  at  different  seasons 
of  the  year,  and  consisting  of  ceremonies  markedly 
different  in  character.  In  the  gloomy  month  of 
February — associated  with  solemn  lustrations — 
occurs  the  festival  known  popularly  (though  not 
in  the  Calendars)  as  the  Parentalia  or  dies  Paren- 
tales,  that  is,  the  days  of  sacrifice  in  connection 
52 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

with  the  dead  members  of  the  family  (parentes, 
parentare).  It  begins  with  the  note  on  February 
13,  Virgo  Vestalis  parentat,  and  continues  till 
the  climax,  Feralia,  on  February  21.  During 
these  days  the  magistrates  laid  aside  the  insignia 
of  their  offices,  the  temples  were  shut,  marriages 
were  forbidden,  and  every  family  carried  out  at 
the  tombs  of  its  relatives  ceremonies  resembling 
those  of  the  sacra  privata.  The  whole  season 
closed  on  February  22  with  the  festival  of  the 
Caristia  or  cara  cognatio,  a  family  reunion  of  the 
survivors  in  a  kind  of '  love-feast,'  which  centred  hi 
the  worship  of  the  Lar  Familiaris.  Here  we  seem 
to  have  simply,  as  in  the  family  rites,  a  peaceful 
and  solemn  acknowledgment  by  the  community 
as  a  whole  of  the  still  subsisting  relation  of  the 
living  and  the  dead.  On  the  9th,  llth,  and  13th 
of  May  occurs  the  Lemuria,  a  ceremony  of  a 
strikingly  different  order.  Once  again  temples 
are  shut  and  marriages  forbidden,  but  the  ritual 
is  of  a  very  different  nature.  The  Lemures  or 
Larvae — for  there  seems  to  be  little  distinction 
between  the  two  names — are  regarded  no  longer 
as  members  of  the  family  to  be  welcomed  back  to 
their  place,  but  as  hostile  spirits  to  be  exorcised.1 

1  We  may  note  that,  though  it  is  a  state  festival,  our  infor- 
mation is  solely  of  rites  in  individual  households. 

53 


THE  EELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

The  head  of  the  house  rises  from  bed  at  midnight, 
washes,  and  walks  barefoot  through  the  house, 
making  signs  for  the  aversion  of  evil  spirits.  In 
his  mouth  he  carries  black  beans  —  always  a 
chthonic  symbol — which  he  spits  out  nine  times 
without  looking  round,  saying,  as  he  does  so, 
'  With  these  I  redeem  me  and  mine  ' :  he  washes 
again,  and  clanks  brass  vessels  together;  nine 
times  he  repeats  the  formula,  'depart,  Manes  of 
our  fathers'  (no  doubt  using  the  dignified  title 
Manes  euphemistically),  and  then  finally  turns 
round.  Here  we  have  in  a  quite  uninistakeable 
manner  the  feeling  of  the  hostility  of  the  spirits 
of  the  dead :  they  must  be  given  their  appropriate 
food  and  got  out  of  the  place  as  quickly  as  pos- 
sible. Some  scholars  have  attempted  to  explain 
the  difference  between  these  two  festivals  on  the 
assumption  that  the  Parentalia  represents  the 
commemoration  of  the  duly  buried  dead,  the 
Lemuria  the  apotropaic  right  for  the  aversion  of 
the  unburied,  and  therefore  hostile  spirits ;  but 
Ovid  has  given  a  far  more  significant  hint,  when 
he  tells  us  that  the  Lemuria  was  the  more  ancient 
festival  of  the  two. 

So  far  we  have  had  no  indication  of  anything 
approaching  divinity  in  connection  with  the  dead 
or   the  underworld  as  distinct  from   the  earth- 
54 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  HOUSEHOLD 

goddesses,  but  the  evidence  for  it,  though  vague 
and  shadowy,  is  not  wanting.  Certain  mysterious 
female  deities,  Tarpeia,  Acca  Larentia,  Carna,  and 
Laverna,  of  whom  late  setiological  myth  had  its 
own  explanation,  have,  in  all  probability,  been 
rightly  interpreted  by  Mommsen  as  divinities  of 
the  lower  world  :  the  commemorative  '  sacrifice  at 
the  tomb,'  which  we  hear  of  in  connection  with 
the  first  two,  was  in  reality,  we  may  suppose,  an 
offering  to  a  chthonic  deity  at  a  mundus. 
A  rather  more  tangible  personality  is  Vediovis, 
who  three  times  a  year  has  his  celebration 
(Agonia  not  feriae)  in  the  Calendar :  he,  as  his 
name  denotes,  must  be  the  '  opposite  of  love,' 
that  is,  probably,  his  chthonic  counterpart,  a 
notion  sufficiently  borne  out  by  his  subsequent 
identification  with  the  Greek  Pluto.  Finally,  of 
course,  there  is  that  vague  body,  the  Di  Manes, 
'  the  good  gods,'  the  principal  deities  of  the  world 
of  the  dead ;  to  them  invocations  are  addressed, 
and  they  have  their  place  in  the  formulae  of  the 
parentalia  and  the  opening  of  the  mundi.1  In 
connection  with  them,  acting  as  a  link  with  the 
female  deities,  we  have  the  strange  goddess  Genita 
Mana,  the  '  spirit  of  birth  and  death.' 

1  Their  mention  in  sepulchral  inscriptions  dates  from  the 
time  of  the  Empire,  when  a  new  conception  of  their  nature 
had  sprung  up. 

55 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

Controversy  is  acute  as  to  the  interpretation  of 
these  facts,  especially  in  regard  to  the  question 
whether  or  no  the  spirits  of  the  dead  were  actually 
worshipped.  I  would  hazard  the  following  recon- 
struction of  history  as  consistent  with  what  we 
otherwise  know  of  Roman  religion,  and  with  the 
evidence  before  us.  From  the  earliest  times  the 
Roman  looked  upon  his  dead  relations  as  in  some 
sense  living,  lying  beneath  the  earth,  but  capable 
alike  of  returning  to  the  world  above  and  of 
influencing  in  some  vague  way  the  fortunes  of  the 
living,  especially  in  relation  to  the  crops  which 
sprung  from  the  ground  in  which  they  lay.  At 
first,  when  his  religion  was  one  of  fear,  he  regarded 
the  dead  as  normally  hostile,  and  their  presence 
as  something  to  be  averted;  this  is  the  stage 
which  gave  birth  to  the  Lemuria.  As  civilisation 
increased,  and  the  sense  of  the  unity  of  household 
and  community  developed,  fear,  proving  un- 
grounded, gave  place  to  a  kindlier  feeling  of  the 
continued  existence  of  the  dead  as  members  of 
household  and  state,  and  even  in  some  sense  as 
an  additional  bond  between  the  living:  this  is  the 
period  which  produced  the  sacra  privata  and  the 
Parentalia.  When  the  numen-feelmg  began  to  pass 
into  that  of  deus,  in  the  first  place  a  connection 
was  felt  between  the  spirits  of  the  dead  and  the 
56 


deities  of  the  earth,  associated  with  the  growth  of 
the  crops,  in  the  second  the  notion  that  the  under- 
world must  have  its  gods  as  well  as  the  world 
above,  produced  the  shadowy  female  deities  and 
Yediovis.  Lastly,  the  same  kind  of  feeling  which 
added  Parentalia  to  Lemuria  developed  the  vague 
general  notion  of  the  Di  Manes,  not  the  deified 
spirits  of  the  dead,  but  peaceful  and  on  the  whole 
kindly  divinities  holding  sway  in  the  world  of 
dead  spirits,  yet  accessible  to  the  prayers  of  the 
living.  The  dead,  then,  were  not  themselves 
worshipped,  but  they  needed  commemoration  and 
kindly  gifts,  and  they  had  in  their  lower  world 
deities  to  whom  prayer  might  be  made  and  wor- 
ship given. 


57 


CHAPTER    VI 

WORSHIP  OF  THE  FIELDS 

THE  life  of  the  early  Roman  in  the  fields,  his 
activities,  his  hopes  and  fears,  are  reflected  in  the 
long  list  of  agricultural  festivals  which  constitute 
the  greater  part  of  the  celebrations  in  the  Calendar, 
and  follow  closely  the  seasons  and  occupations  of 
the  agricultural  year.  We  are,  of  course,  in  the 
Calendar  dealing,  to  speak  strictly,  with  the  wor- 
ship of  the  state,  and  not  with  the  semi-private 
festivals  of  groups  of  farmers,  but  in  many  in- 
stances, such  as  the  Robigalia,  the  state  seems  only 
to  have  taken  over  the  cult  of  the  farmers,  pre- 
serving carefully  the  site  on  which  the  celebration 
took  place ;  in  others,  such  as  the  Terminalia  and 
the  Parilia,  it  seems  to  have  established,  as  it 
were,  a  state-counterpart  of  a  rite  performed  inde- 
pendently at  many  rustic  centres :  in  both  cases 
we  are  justified  in  inferring  the  practice  of  the 
early  Roman  agriculturalist.  We  shall  see  that  in 
most  cases  these  festivals  are  associated — though 
58 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  FIELDS 

often  loosely  enough — with  the  worship  of  a  par- 
ticular divinity.  Sometimes,  however, — as  in  the 
case  of  the  Lupercalia — it  is  very  difficult  to  discover 
who  this  divinity  was ;  in  other  festivals,  such  as 
the  Robigalia,  it  looks  as  if  the  eponymous  deity 
was  a  comparatively  late  development.  We  may, 
therefore,  suppose,  on  the  analogy  of  what  we 
have  already  seen  to  be  the  general  lines  of 
development  in  Roman  religion,  that  the  festivals 
in  origin  centred  round  a  purpose  rather  than  a 
personality,  and  were  addressed  '  to  all  spirits 
whom  it  might  concern';  and  that  later,  when  the 
deus  notion  was  on  the  increase,  they  either 
attached  themselves  to  some  god  whose  person- 
ality was  already  distinct,  as  the  Vinalia  were 
attached  to  luppiter,  or  '  developed '  a  deity  of 
their  own.  Among  these  deities,  strictly  func- 
tional as  a  rule  and  existing  only  in  connection 
with  their  special  festival,  we  shall  notice  the 
frequent  recurrence  of  a  divinity  pair,  not,  of 
course,  mythologically  related  as  husband  and 
wife,  but  representing,  perhaps,  the  male  and 
female  aspects  of  the  same  process  of  develop- 
ment. 

The  festivals  divide  themselves  naturally  into 
three  groups:  those  of  Spring,  expressive  of  the 
hopes  and  fears  for  the  growing  crops  and  herds ; 
59 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

those  of  Summer,  the  festivals  of  fulfilment,  in- 
cluding the  celebration  of  harvest;  and  those  of 
Winter,  the  festivals  of  sowing,  of  social  rejoicing, 
and  in  the  later  months  of  purificatory  anticipation 
of  the  coming  year. 

1.  Festivals  of  Spring. — The  old  Roman  year 
— as  may  be  seen  clearly  enough  from  the  names 
of  the  months  still  known  by  numbers,  Septem- 
ber, October,  etc. — began  in  March :  according  to 
tradition  Romulus  reckoned  a  year  of  ten  months 
altogether,  and  Numa  added  January  and  Feb- 
ruary. The  Spring  months  properly  speaking 
may  be  reckoned  as  March,  April,  and  May.  In 
March  there  were  in  the  developed  Calendar  no 
festivals  of  an  immediately  recognisable  agricul- 
tural character,  but  the  whole  month  was  prac- 
tically consecrated  to  its  eponymous  deity,  Mars. 
Now,  to  the  Roman  of  the  Republic,  Mars  was 
undoubtedly  the  deity  associated  with  war,  and 
his  special  festivals  in  this  month  are  of  a  war- 
like character:  on  the  9th  the  priests  (Salii) 
began  the  ancient  custom  of  carrying  his  sacred 
shields  (ancilia)  round  the  town  from  one 
ordained  resting-place  to  another:  on  the  19th, 
Quinquatrus,  the  shields  were  solemnly  purified, 
and  on  the  23rd  the  same  ceremony  was  per- 
formed with  the  war  -  trumpets  :  the  Equirria 
60 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  FIELDS 

(horse-races)  of  March  14  may  have  had  an 
agricultural  origin — we  shall  meet  with  races  later 
on  as  a  feature  of  rustic  festivals — but  they  were 
certainly  celebrated  in  a  military  manner.  Yet 
there  is  good  reason  for  believing  that  Mars  was 
in  origin  associated  not  with  war,  but  with  the 
growth  of  vegetation:  he  was,  as  we  shall  see, 
the  chief  deity  addressed  in  the  solemn  lustra- 
tion of  the  fields  (Ambarvalia),  and  if  our  general 
notion  of  the  development  of  religion  with  the 
growing  needs  of  the  agricultural  community 
crystallising  into  a  state  be  correct,  it  may  well 
be  that  a  deity  originally  concerned  with  the 
interests  of  the  farmer  took  on  himself  the  pro- 
tection of  the  soldier,  when  the  fully  developed 
state  came  into  collision  with  its  neighbours.  If 
so,  we  may  well  have  in  these  recurring  festivals 
of  Mars  the  sense,  as  Mr.  Warde  Fowler  has  put  it, 
of  '  some  great  numen  at  work,  quickening  vegeta- 
tion, and  calling  into  life  the  powers  of  reproduc- 
tion in  man  and  the  animals.'  Possibly  another 
agricultural  note  is  struck  in  the  Liberalia  of  the 
17th :  though  the  cult  of  Liber  was  almost  entirely 
overlaid  by  his  subsequent  identification  with 
Dionysus,  it  seems  right  to  recognise  in  him  and 
his  female  counterpart,  Libera,  a  general  spirit  of 
creativeness. 

61 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

The  character  of  April  is  much  more  clearly 
marked:   the   month   is  filled   with   a  series   of 
festivals — all  of  a  clearly  agricultural  nature — 
prayers  for  the  crops  now  in  the  earth,  and  the 
purification  of  the  men  and  animals  on  the  farm. 
The  series  opens  with  the  Fordicidia  on  the  15th, 
when  pregnant  cows  were  sacrificed :  their  unborn 
calves  were  torn  from  them  and  burnt,  the  ashes 
being  kept  by  the  Vestal  Virgin  in  Vesta's  store- 
house (penus  Vestae)  for  use  at  the  Parilia.     The 
general  symbolism  of  fertility  is  very  clear;  the 
goddess  associated  with  the  festival  is  Tellus,  the 
earth  herself,  and  the  local  origin  of  these  festivals 
is  shown  in  the  fact  that  not  only  was  the  sacrifice 
made  for  the  whole  people  on  the  Capitol,  but 
separately  in  each  one  of  the  curiae.     The  For- 
dicidia is  closely  followed  by  the  Cerealia  on  the 
19th — the  festival  of  another  earth-goddess  (Ceres, 
creare)  —  more    especially    connected    with    the 
growth  of  corn.     A  very  curious  feature  of  the 
ritual  was  the  fastening  of  fire-brands  to  the  tails 
of  foxes,  which  were  then  let  loose  in  what  was 
afterwards  the  Circus  Maximus :  a  symbol  possibly, 
as  Wissowa  thinks,  of  sunlight,  possibly  of  the 
vegetation  -  spirit.      But  the  most  important  of 
the  April  ceremonies  is  undoubtedly  the  Parilia 
of  the   21st,   the  festival    of    the  very  ancient 
62 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  FIELDS 

rustic  numen,  Pales.  l  Ovid's  description  of  the 
celebration  is  so  interesting  and  so  full  of  the 
characteristic  colour  of  the  Roman  rustic  festivals 
that  I  may  perhaps  be  pardoned  for  reproducing 
it  at  greater  length.  '  Shepherd,'  he  says,  address- 
ing the  rustic  worshipper,  '  at  the  first  streak  of 
dawn  purify  thy  well-fed  flocks:  let  water  first 
besprinkle  them,  and  a  branch  sweep  clean  the 
ground.  Let  the  folds  be  adorned  with  leaves  and 
branches  fastened  to  them,  while  a  trailing  wreath 
covers  the  gay-decked  gates.  Let  blue  flames 
rise  from  the  living  sulphur  and  the  sheep  bleat 
loud  as  she  feels  the  touch  of  the  smoking  sulphur. 
Burn  the  male  olive-branch  and  the  pine  twig 
and  juniper,  and  let  the  blazing  laurel  crackle 
amid  the  hearth.  A  basket  full  of  millet  must 
go  with  the  millet  cakes :  this  is  the  food  wherein 
the  country  goddess  finds  pleasure  most  of  all. 
Give  her  too  her  own  share  of  the  feast  and  her 
pail  of  milk,  and  when  her  share  has  been  set 
aside,  then  with  milk  warm  from  the  cow  make 
prayer  to  Pales,  guardian  of  the  woods.'  The  poet 
then  recites  a  long  prayer,  in  which  the  farmer 
first  begs  forgiveness  for  any  unwitting  sins  he 
may  have  committed  against  the  rustic  deities, 
such  as  trespassing  on  their  groves  or  sheltering 

1  Ov.,  Fast.,  iv.  735. 
63 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

his  flocks  beneath  their  altar,  and  then  prays 
for  the  aversion  of  disease  and  the  prosperity  of 
crops,  flocks,  and  herds.  '  Thus  must  the  goddess 
be  won,  this  prayer  say  four  times  turning  to 
the  sunrise,  and  wash  thy  hands  in  the  running 
stream.  Then  set  the  rustic  bowl  upon  the  table 
in  place  of  the  wine-bowl,  and  drink  the  snowy 
milk  and  dark  must,  and  soon  through  the 
heaps  of  crackling  straw  leap  in  swift  course 
with  eager  limbs.'  All  the  worshippers  then  set 
to  leaping  through  the  blazing  fires,  even  the 
flocks  and  herds  were  driven  through,  and  general 
hilarity  reigned.  Many  points  of  detail  might 
be  noticed,  such  as  that  in  the  urban  counter- 
part of  the  festival,  which  Ovid  carefully  dis- 
tinguishes from  the  country  celebrations,  the  fire 
was  sprinkled  with  the  ashes  from  the  calves  of  the 
Fordicidia  and  the  blood  of  Mars'  October  horse — 
another  link  between  Mars  and  agriculture.  But 
it  is  most  interesting  to  note  the  double  character 
of  the  ceremony — as  a  purification  of  man  and 
beast  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  a 
prayer  for  the  prosperity  of  the  season  to  come. 
Three  special  festivals  remain  in  April.  At  the 
Vinalia  (priora)  of  the  23rd,  the  wine-skins  of 
the  previous  year  were  opened  and  the  wine 
tasted,  and,  we  may  suppose,  supplication  was 
64 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  FIELDS 

made  for  the  vintage  to  come,  the  festival  being 
dedicated  to  the  sky  -  god,  luppiter.  At  the 
Robigalia  of  the  25th  the  offering  of  a  dog  was 
made  for  the  aversion  of  mildew  (robigo),  to 
Robigus  (who  looks  like  a  developed  eponymous 
deity)  at  the  fifth  milestone  on  the  Via  Claudia — 
the  ancient  boundary  of  Roman  territory.  The 
Floralia  of  the  28th  does  not  occur  in  the  old 
Calendars,  probably  because  it  was  a  moveable 
feast  (feriae  conceptivae),  but  it  is  an  unmis- 
takeable  petition  to  the  numen  Flora  for  the 
blossoming  of  the  season's  flowers. 

May  was  a  month  of  more  critical  importance 
for  the  welfare  of  the  crops,  and  therefore  its 
festivals  were  mostly  of  a  more  sombre  character. 
The  9th,  llth,  and  13th  were  the  days  set  apart 
for  the  Lemuria,  the  aversion  of  the  hostile  spirits 
of  the  dead,  of  which  we  have  already  spoken,  and 
a  similarly  gloomy  character  probably  attached 
to  the  Agonia  of  Vediovis  on  the  21st.  But  of 
far  the  greatest  interest  is  the  moveable  feast  of 
the  Ambarvalia,  the  great  lustration  of  the  fields, 
which  took  place  towards  the  end  of  the  month : 
the  date  of  its  occurrence  was  no  doubt  fixed 
according  to  the  state  of  the  crops  in  any  given 
year.  As  the  individual  farmer  purified  his  own 
fields  for  the  aversion  of  evil,  so  a  solemn  lustra- 

E  65 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

tion  of  the  boundaries  of  the  state  was  performed 
by  special  priests,  known  as  the  Arval  brethren 
(  fratres  Arvales).  With  ceremonial  dancing  (tri- 
pudium)  they  moved  along  the  boundary-marks 
and  made  the  farmer's  most  complete  offering  of 
the  pig,  sheep,  and  ox  (suovetaurilia) :  the  fruits 
of  the  last  year  and  the  new  harvest  (aridae  et 
virides)  played  a  large  part  in  the  ceremonial, 
and  a  solemn  litany  was  recited  for  the  aversion 
of  every  kind  of  pest  from  the  crops.  In  Virgil's 
account  the  prayer  is  made  to  Ceres,  and  we 
know  that  in  imperial  times,  when  the  Ambarvalia 
became  very  closely  connected  with  the  worship 
of  the  imperial  house,  the  centre  of  the  cult  was 
the  earth-goddess,  Dea  Dia;  but  in  the  earliest 
account  of  the  rustic  ceremony  which  we  possess 
in  Cato,  Mars  is  addressed  in  the  unmistakeable 
character  of  an  agricultural  deity.  '  Father  Mars, 
I  pray  and  beseech  thee  that  thou  mayest  be 
gracious  and  favourable  to  me,  to  my  home,  and 
my  household,  for  which  cause  I  have  ordained 
that  the  offering  of  pig,  sheep,  and  ox  be  carried 
round  my  fields,  my  land,  and  my  farm:  that 
thou  mayest  avert,  ward  off,  and  keep  afar  all 
disease,  visible  and  invisible,  all  barrenness,  waste, 
misfortune,  and  ill  weather :  that  thou  mayest 
suffer  our  crops,  our  corn,  our  vines  and  bushes 
66 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  FIELDS 

to  grow  and  come  to  prosperity :  that  thou  mayest 
preserve  the  shepherds  and  the  flocks  in  safety,  and 
grant  health  and  strength  to  me,  to  my  home, 
and  my  household.'  We  have  perhaps  here 
another  rustic  ceremony  addressed  in  origin  to 
all  numina,  whom  it  might  concern,  and,  as  it 
were,  specialising  itself  from  time  to  time  in  an 
appeal  to  one  definite  deity  or  another,  but  it  is 
also  clear  evidence  of  an  early  agricultural  asso- 
ciation of  Mars.  The  Ambarvalia  is  one  of  the 
most  picturesque  of  the  field  ceremonies,  and  a 
peculiarly  beautiful  and  imaginative  description 
of  it  may  be  found  in  the  first  chapter  of  Pater's 
Marius  the  Epicurean. 

In  June  and  July  the  farmer  was  waiting  for 
the  completion  of  the  harvest,  and  the  great 
state-festivals  of  the  period  are  not  agricultural. 

2.  Festivals  of  the  Harvest. — In  August  the 
farmer's  hopes  are  at  last  realised,  and  the  harvest 
is  brought  in.  The  season  is  marked  by  two  closely 
connected  festivals  on  the  21st  and  25th  in  honour 
of  the  old  divinity  -  pair,  Census  (condere),  the 
god  of  the  storehouse  and  Ops,  the  deity  of  the 
wealth  of  harvest.  At  the  Consnalia  an  offering 
is  made  by  the  flamen  Quirinalis,  assisted  by 
the  Vestal  virgins,  at  an  underground  altar  in 
the  Circus  Maximus,  specially  uncovered  for  the 
67 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

occasion:  here  we  have  probably  not  so  much 
the  notion  of  a  chthonic  deity,  as  a  relic  of  the 
simple  practices  of  an  early  agricultural  age,  when 
the  crops  were  stored  underground.  The  beasts 
who  had  taken  part  in  the  harvest  were  released 
from  their  labours  during  the  day,  and  were 
decorated  with  flowers:  the  festival  included  a 
race  of  mules,  the  regular  Italian  beasts  of  burden. 
Four  days  after  this  general  festivity  occurred 
the  second  harvest-ceremony  of  the  Opiconsivia, 
held  in  the  shrine  (sacrarium)  of  the  Regia,  and 
attended  only  by  the  pontifex  maximus  and  the 
Vestal  virgins.  This  is  clearly  the  state-harvest 
of  the  regal  period,  the  symbolic  storing  of  the 
state-crops  in  the  sacred  storehouse  of  the  palace 
by  the  king  and  his  daughters.  Both  festivals 
are  significant,  and  we  shall  meet  with  Census 
and  Ops  again  in  close  connection  in  December. 
The  Portunalia  of  the  17th  may  have  been 
another  harvest-home,  if  we  can  believe  the  old 
authorities,  who  tell  us  that  Portunus  was  a  '  god 
of  doors '  (portae). 

The  Vinalia  Rustica  of  August  19  we  cannot 
sufficiently  interpret  through  lack  of  information : 
it  cannot,  of  course,  have  been  the  festival  of  the 
vintage,  for  it  is  too  early :  it  may  have  been  a 
propitiatory  ceremony  for  the  ripening  grapes,  in 
68 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  FIELDS 

which  case  it  was  probably  connected  with  the 
auspicatio  vindemiae,  in  which  theflamen  Dialis 
(note  again  the  association  of  luppiter  and  the 
vine)  solemnly  plucked  the  first  grapes ;  or  it  may 
be  a  festival  of  wine,  not  vines,  in  which  case  its 
main  feature  would  most  likely  be  the  opening  of 
the  last  year's  vintage. 

September  contains  no  great  festival,  and  the 
harvest-season  closes  on  October  11  with  the 
Meditrinalia — the  nearest  approach  to  a  thanks- 
giving for  the  vintage.  On  that  day  the  first 
must  of  the  new  vintage  and  the  wine  of  the  old 
were  solemnly  tasted,  apparently  as  a  spell  against 
disease,  the  worshipper  using  the  strange  formula, 
'  I  drink  the  new  and  the  old  wine,  with  new  wine 
and  old  I  heal  (medeor)  disease.'  This  ceremony 
gave  its  name  to  the  festival  and  was  the  cause 
of  the  subsequent  evolution  of  an  eponymous 
deity,  Meditrina,  but  there  is  little  doubt  that  in 
origin  here,  as  in  the  other  wine-festivals,  the 
deity  concerned  was  at  first  luppiter.  Among  the 
other  rustic  ceremonies  of  the  month  we  may 
notice  the  festival  of  springs  (Fontinalia)  on 
October  13  :  wells  were  decorated  with  garlands 
and  flowers  flung  into  the  waters. 

3.  Festivals  of  the  Winter. — The  winter-festi- 
vals cannot  be  summed  up  under  one  general 
69 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

notion  so  easily  as  those  of  spring  or  summer,  but 
they  fall  fairly  naturally  into  two  groups — the 
festivals  immediately  connected  with  agricultural 
life  and  those  associated  with  the  dead  and  the 
underworld  or  with  solemn  purification.  The 
main  action  of  the  farmer's  life  during  the  winter 
is,  of  course,  the  sowing  of  the  next  year's  crop, 
which  was  commemorated  in  the  ancient  festival 
of  the  Saturnalia  on  December  17.  Though  the 
Saturnalia  is  perhaps  the  most  familiar  to  us  of 
all  the  Roman  festivals,  partly  from  the  allusions  in 
the  classics,  especially  in  Horace,  partly  because  it 
is  no  doubt  the  source  of  many  of  our  own  Christ- 
mas festivities,  it  is  yet  almost  impossible  now 
to  recover  anything  of  its  original  Roman  char- 
acter. Greek  influence  set  to  work  on  it  very 
early,  identifying  Saturnus  with  Cronos  and  estab- 
lishing him  in  a  Greek  temple  with  all  the  accom- 
paniments of  Greek  ritual.  All  the  familiar 
features  of  the  festival — the  freedom  and  license 
of  the  slaves,  the  giving  of  presents,  even  the  wax- 
candles,  which  are  the  prototype  of  those  on  our  own 
Christmas-tree — are  almost  certainly  due  to  Greek 
origin.  We  are  left  with  nothing  but  the  name 
Saturnus  (connected  with  the  root  of  semen,  severe) 
and  the  date  to  assure  us  that  we  have  here  in 
reality  a  genuine  Roman  festival  of  the  sowing  of 
70 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  FIELDS 

the  crops.  Of  a  similar  nature — marking,  as  Ovid 
tells  us,  the  completion  of  the  sowing — was  the 
feriae  sementivae  or  Paganalia,  associated  with  the 
earth-goddesses,  Ceres  and  Tellus.  Meal-cakes  and 
a  pregnant  sow  were  the  offerings,  the  beasts  who 
had  helped  in  the  ploughing  were  garlanded,  and 
prayer  was  made  for  the  seed  resting  in  the 
ground.  A  curious  feature  of  the  winter  wor- 
ship is  the  repetition  of  festivals  to  the  harvest 
deities,  Census  and  Ops,  separated  by  the  same 
interval  of  three  days,  on  December  15  and 
19  :  it  may  be  that  we  have  here  an  indication 
of  the  final  completion  of  the  harvest,  or,  as  Mr. 
Warde  Fowler  has  suggested,  a  ceremonial  open- 
ing of  the  storehouses,  to  see  that  the  harvest  is 
not  rotting.  Among  the  other  country  festivals 
of  the  period  we  may  notice  that  of  Carmenta,  on 
the  llth  and  15th  of  January:  she  seems  to  have 
been  in  origin  a  water-Tiumen,  but  was  early  asso- 
ciated with  childbirth :  hence  the  rigid  exclusion 
of  men  from  her  ceremonies  and  possibly  the 
taboo  on  leathern  thongs,  on  the  ground  that 
nothing  involving  death  must  be  used  in  the 
worship  of  a  deity  of  birth.  The  repetition  of  her 
festival  may  possibly  point  to  separate  celebra- 
tions of  the  communities  of  Palatine  and  Quirinal. 
At  this  time,  too,  occurred  the  rustic  ceremonies 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

at  the  boundaries  (Terminalia)  and  the  offering 
to  the  Lares  at  the  'marches'  (Compitalia),  of 
which  we  have  spoken  in  treating  of  the  worship 
of  the  house. 

The  other  group  of  winter-festivals  is  of  a  much 
more  gloomy  and  less  definitely  rustic  type,  though 
they  clearly  date  from  the  period  of  the  agricul- 
tural community.  Of  the  Feralia  of  February 
21,  the  culmination  of  the  festival  of  the  kindred 
dead  (Parentalia),  we  have  already  spoken.  The 
Larentalia  is  a  very  mysterious  occasion,  and  was 
supposed  by  the  Romans  themselves  to  be  an 
offering  'at  the  tomb'  of  a  legendary  Acca 
Larentia,  mistress  of  Hercules.  But  we  have  seen 
reason  to  think  that  Larentia  was  in  reality  a 
deity  of  the  dead,  and  the  '  tomb '  a  mundus  :  if 
so,  we  have  another  link  between  the  winter 
season  and  the  worship  of  the  underworld.  There 
remains  the  weird  festival  of  the  Lupercalia  on 
February  15,  to  which  we  have  had  occasion  to 
refer  several  times,  and  which  has  become  more 
familiar  to  most  of  us  than  other  Roman  festivals 
owing  to  its  political  use  by  Mark  Antony  in 
44  B.C.  As  we  have  argued  already,  it  seems  to 
belong  to  the  very  oldest  stratum  of  the  Palatine 
settlement,  and  we  may  therefore  appropriately 
close  this  account  of  the  early  festivals  with  a 
72 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  FIELDS 

somewhat  fuller  description  of  it.  The  worshippers 
assembled  at  the  Lupercal,  a  cave  on  the  Palatine 
hill :  there  goats  and  a  dog  were  sacrificed,  and 
two  youths  belonging  to  the  two  colleges  of  Fabian 
and  Quintian  (or  Quintilian)  Luperci  had  their 
foreheads  smeared  with  the  knife  used  for  the 
sacrifice  and  wiped  with  wool  dipped  in  milk — at 
which  point  it  was  ordained  that  they  should 
laugh.  Then  they  girt  on  the  skins  of  the  slain 
goats  and,  after  feasting,  ran  their  course  round 
the  boundaries  of  the  Palatine  hill,  followed  each 
by  his  own  company  of  youths,  and  striking 
women  on  their  way  with  strips,  known  as  februae 
or  lunonis  amicula,  cut  from  the  goats'  hides. 
Here  we  have  a  summary  of  many  of  the  im- 
portant points  which  we  have  noticed  in  the 
rustic  festivals:  from  the  pre-Roman  stratum 
comes  the  idea  of  communion  with  the  sacrificed 
animal  in  the  smearing  of  the  blood  and  the 
wearing  of  the  skin,  and  also  the  magic  charm 
involved  in  the  striking  of  the  women  to  procure 
fertility :  it  is  typical  of  the  true  feeling  of  Roman 
religion  that  we  cannot  with  any  certainty  tell 
what  deity  was  associated  with  the  rite,  though 
probably  it  was  Faunus:  the  rustic  character  of 
the  ceremony  is  indicated  by  the  bowl  of  milk  in 
which  the  wool  was  dipped  and  the  sacrifice  of 
73 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

goats :  the  idea  of  lustration  is  clearly  marked  in 
the  course  round  the  boundaries :  the  original 
Palatine  settlement  stands  out  in  the  limits  of  that 
course  and  the  site  of  the  Lupercal,  and  the  later 
synoecismus  is  seen  in  the,  presumably  subsequent, 
addition  of  the  second  college  of  Luperci.  A  careful 
study  of  the  Lupercalia  as  an  epitome  of  the  char- 
acter and  development  of  the  Roman  agricultural 
festivals,  though  it  would  not  show  the  brighter 
aspect  of  some  of  the  spring  and  summer  celebra- 
tions, would  yet  give  a  true  notion  of  the  history 
and  spirit  of  the  whole. 


CHAPTER   VII 

WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 

SINCE,  in  the  matter  of  religion,  the  Roman  state 
is  in  the  main  but  the  agricultural  household 
magnified,  we  shall  not,  in  considering  its  worship, 
be  entering  on  a  new  stratum  of  ideas,  but  rather 
looking  at  the  development  of  notions  and  senti- 
ments already  familiar.  To  deal,  however,  with 
the  state-worship  in  full  would  not  only  far 
exceed  the  limits  of  this  sketch,  but  would  lead 
us  away  from  religious  ideas  into  the  region  of 
what  we  might  now  call  'ecclesiastical  manage- 
ment.' I  propose  therefore  to  confine  myself  to 
two  points,  firstly,  the  broadening  of  the  old 
conceptions  of  the  household  and  the  fields  and 
their  adaptation  to  the  life  of  the  state,  and 
secondly — to  be  treated  very  shortly  and  as  an 
indication  of  the  Roman  character — the  organisa- 
tion of  religion. 

1.  Development  of  the  Worship  of  House  and 
Fields. — Here  we  shall  find  two  main  character- 
75 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

istics.  The  state  in  the  first  place,  as  we  have 
several  times  hinted  in  anticipation,  establishes 
its  own  counterpart  of  the  household  and  rustic 
cults  and  adapts  to  its  own  use  the  ideas  which 
they  involve:  in  the  second,  and  particularly 
in  connection  with  some  of  the  field-deities,  it 
evolves  new  and  very  frequently  abstract  notions, 
foreign  to  the  life  of  the  independent  country 
households,  but  necessary  and  vital  to  the  life 
of  an  organised  community.  Let  us  look  first  at 
the  fate  of  the  household  deities. 

lanus. — We  left  lanus  as  the  numen  of  the 
house-door :  he  passes  into  the  state  exactly  in  the 
same  capacity :  the  state  too  has  its  '  door,'  the 
gate  at  the  north-east  corner  of  the  Forum,  and 
this  becomes  the  seat  of  his  state-cult — the  door 
which,  according  to  Augustan  legend,  is  opened 
in  the  time  of  war  and  only  shut  when  Rome  is 
at  peace  with  all  the  world.  But  reflection  soon 
gets  to  work  on  lanus :  a  door  has  two  sides,  it 
can  both  open  and  shut;  therefore,  as  early  as 
the  song  of  the  Salii,  he  has  developed  the  cult- 
epithets  '  Opener,'  '  Shutter '  (Patulci,  Cloesi),  and 
as  soon  as  he  is  thought  of  as  anything  approach- 
ing a  personality  he  is  '  two-headed '  (bifrons), 
as  he  appears  in  later  representations.  The  door 
again  is  the  first  thing  you  come  to  in  entering 
76 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 

a  house:  the  'door-spirit'  then,  with  that 
tendency  to  abstraction  which  we  shall  see  shortly 
in  other  cases,  becomes  the  god  of  beginnings. 
He  watches  over  the  very  first  beginning  of 
human  life  in  his  character  of  Consevius ;  to  him 
is  sacred  the  first  hour  of  the  day  (pater 
matutinus),  the  Calends  of  every  month,  and 
the  first  month  of  the  year  (lanuarius) ;  to 
hun  too  is  offered  by  the  rex  sacrorum  the 
first  sacrifice  of  the  year,  the  Agonium  on 
the  9th  of  January.  In  this  capacity,  moreover, 
his  name  comes  first  in  all  the  formulae  of 
prayer,  and  he  is  looked  upon — not  indeed  as 
the  father  of  the  gods — for  that  is  a  much  too 
anthropomorphic  notion — but  as  what  we  might 
now  term  their  '  logical  antecedent ' :  divum 
deus,  as  the  song  of  the  Salii  quaintly  puts 
it,  principium  deorum,  as  later  interpretation 
explained  it.  Yet  through  all  he  remains  the 
most  typical  Roman  deity :  he  does  not  acquire 
a  temple  till  217  B.C.,  nor  a  bust  until  quite  late, 
nor  is  he  ever  identified  with  a  Greek  counter- 
part. In  his  capacity  as  pater  matutinus  he  has 
a  native  female  counterpart  in  Matuta,  a  dawn- 
deity,  who  becomes  a  protectress  in  childbirth, 
and  as  such  is  the  centre  of  the  matrons'  festival, 
the  Matralia  of  June  11. 
77 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

Vesta. — The  history  of  Vesta  is  perhaps  less 
romantic,  but  it  affords  a  more  exact  parallel 
between  household  and  state.  In  the  primitive 
community  the  king's  hearth  is  not  merely  of  sym- 
bolical importance,  but  of  great  practical  utility, 
in  that  it  is  kept  continually  burning  as  the 
source  of  fire  on  which  the  individual  householder 
may  draw :  hence  it  is  the  duty  of  the  king's 
daughters  to  care  for  it  and  keep  the  flame  per- 
petually alight.  In  Rome  the  temple  of  Vesta 
is  the  king's  hearth,  situated,  as  one  would  expect, 
in  close  proximity  to  the  regia.  The  fire  is  kept 
continually  blazing  except  on  the  1st  of  March 
of  every  year,  when  it  is  allowed  to  go  out  and 
is  ceremonially  renewed.  The  Vestal  virgins, 
sworn  to  perpetual  virginity  and  charged  with 
the  preservation  of  the  sacred  flame,  are  '  the 
king's  daughters,'  living  in  a  kind  of  convent 
(atrium  Vestoe)  and  under  the  charge  of  the  king's 
representative,  the  pontifex  maximus.  It  is  their 
duty  too,  as  the  natural  cooks  of  the  sacred  royal 
household,  to  make  the  salt  cake  (mold  salsa)  to 
be  used  at  the  year's  festivals  and  to  preserve 
it  and  other  sacred  objects,  such  as  the  ashes  of 
the  Fordicidia,  in  the  storehouse  of  Vesta  (penus 
Vestce).  In  the  month  of  June  from  the  7th  to 
the  15th,  with  a  climax  on  the  9th,  the  day 
73 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 

of  the  Vestalia,  the  matrons  who  all  the  year 
round  have  tended  their  own  hearths,  come  in 
solemn  procession  bare-footed  to  make  their 
homely  offerings  at  the  state-hearth,  and  the 
virgins  meanwhile  offer  the  cakes  that  they  have 
made.  For  eight  days  the  ceremony  continues, 
during  which  time  the  bakers  and  millers  keep 
holiday;  the  days  are  religiosi  (marriages  are 
unlucky  and  other  taboos  are  observed)  and  also 
nefasti  (no  public  business  may  be  performed) ; 
until  the  ceremony  closes  on  the  15th,  with  the 
solemn  cleansing  of  the  temple  and  the  casting 
of  the  refuse  into  the  Tiber,  and  then  the  normal 
life  of  the  state  may  be  renewed — Q.  St.  D.  F. 
(Quando  Stercus  Lelatum  Fas)  is  the  unique  entry 
in  the  Calendars.  This  is  all  less  imaginative 
than  the  development  of  lanus,  but  the  under- 
lying feeling  is  intensely  Roman  and  there  could 
be  no  clearer  idea  of  the  natural  adaptation 
of  the  household-cult  to  the  religion  of  the 
state. 

Penates,  Lares,  and  Genius. — The  other  house- 
hold deities  too  have  their  counterpart,  though  not 
so  prominently  marked,  in  the  worship  of  the  state. 
The  magistrates,  on  entering  office,  took  oath  by 
luppiter  and  the  Di Penates populi  RomaniQuiri- 
tium,  and  that  the  conception  was  as  wide  in  the 
79 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

state  as  in  the  household  is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
on  less  formal  occasions  the  formula  appears  as 
luppiter  et  ceteri  di  omnes  immortales.  The 
Penates  of  the  state  then  would  include  all  the 
state-deities;  but  that  their  original  character  is  not 
lost  sight  of  we  can  see  from  the  statement  of  Varro 
that  in  the  penus  Vestce  (the  '  state  storehouse ') 
were  preserved  their  sigilla — not  apparently  sensu- 
ous representations,  but  symbolic  objects,  such  as 
we  have  seen  before  in  cases  like  that  of  the  silex 
of  luppiter.  The  Lares  again  find  their  counter- 
part in  the  Lares  Praestites  of  the  state,  and  their 
rustic  festival,  the  Compitalia,  has  its  urban 
reproduction,  which,  as  it  involved  considerable 
license  on  the  part  of  populace  and  slaves,  was 
often  in  the  later  period  of  the  Republic  a  cause 
of  serious  political  disturbance.  Even  the  Genius, 
though  rather  vaguely,  passes  over  to  the  state 
and  we  hear  of  the  Genius  populi  Romani  or  the 
Genius  urbis  Romce,  with  regard  to  which 
Servius  quotes  from  an  inscription  on  a  shield 
the  characteristic  addition,  sive  mas  sive  femina : 
in  much  later  times  we  find  the  exact  counter- 
part of  the  domestic  worship  of  the  Genius  of  the 
pater  familias  in  the  cult  of  the  Genius  of 
the  Emperor — the  foundation  of  the  whole  of 
the  imperial  worship. 

80 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 

We  have  observed  already  how  the  cults  of 
the  fields  were  taken  over  by  the  state  and  their 
counterparts  established  in  the  great  festivals 
of  the  Calendar.  Naturally  enough  most  of  the 
deities  concerned,  existing  only  for  the  part  they 
played  in  these  festivals,  retained  their  original 
character  without  further  development.  But 
with  a  few  it  was  different :  it  was  their  fate  to 
acquire  new  characteristics  and  new  functions, 
and,  developing  with  the  needs  of  the  community, 
to  become  the  great  gods  of  the  state :  of  these 
we  must  give  some  brief  account. 

luppiter. — We  have  known  luppiter  hitherto 
either  in  connection  with  certain  very  primitive 
survivals,  or  in  the  genuine  Roman  period  as  a  sky- 
numen,  concerned  with  the  grape-harvest  in  the 
two  Vinalia  and  the  Meditrinalia,  and  the  recipient 
at  the  family  meal  of  a  daps  as  a  general  pro- 
pitiation before  the  beginning  of  the  sowing. 
As  sky-god  he  passes  to  the  state :  Lucetius  (lux) 
is  his  title  in  the  song  of  the  Salii  and  to  him 
are  sacred  the  Ides  of  every  month — the  time 
of  the  full  moon,  when  there  is  most  light  in  the 
heavens  by  night  as  well  as  day.  In  his  agri- 
cultural connection  he  has  his  wine-festivals  in 
the  state  as  in  the  country,  and  the  household 
daps  becomes  the  more  elaborate  epulum  lovis, 
F  81 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

in  which  the  whole  community,  as  it  were,  enter- 
tained him  at  a  banquet.  As  a  sky-deity,  too, 
he  is  particularly  concerned  with  the  thunderbolt 
and  the  lightning-flash  (luppiter  Fulmen,  Fulgur), 
and  to  him  are  sacred  the  always  ominous  spots 
which  had  been  struck  by  lightning  (bidentalia) : 
with  the  more  alarming  occurrence  of  lightning 
by  night  he  has  a  special  connection  under  the 
cult-title  luppiter  Summanus.  But  as  the  little 
community  grew,  and  especially  perhaps  after 
the  union  of  the  two  settlements,  the  worship  of 
luppiter  Feretrius,  associated  with  the  sacred 
oak  upon  the  Capitol — the  hill  between  Palatine 
and  Quirinal  —  comes  more  and  more  into 
prominence  as  a  bond  of  union  and  the  central 
point  of  the  state's  religious  life :  it  tends  indeed 
to  take  the  place  of  priority,  which  had  previously 
been  occupied  by  lanus.  The  community  goes 
to  war  with  its  neighbours,  and  after  a  signal 
victory  the  spolia  opima  must  be  dedicated  on 
the  sacred  oak:  indeed  luppiter  is  in  a  special 
sense  with  them  in  the  battle  and  must  now  be 
worshipped  as  the  '  stayer  of  rout '  (Stater)  and 
the  'giver  of  victory'  (Victor).  War  is  a  new 
province  of  the  state's  activity,  but,  characteristic- 
ally enough,  it  does  not  evolve  its  own  numen, 
but  enlarges  the  sphere  of  the  somewhat  elastic 
82 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 

spirits  already  existing.  So  too  in  the  internal 
organisation  of  the  state  there  is  felt  the  need  of 
a  religious  sanction  for  public  morality,  and 
luppiter — though  vaguely  at  first — takes  on  him 
the  character  of  a  deity  of  justice.  In  this  con- 
nection he  is  primarily  the  god  of  oaths :  we  have 
seen  how  his  sacred  silex  was  used  in  the  oath 
of  treaty :  it  is  also  the  most  solemn  witness  to 
the  oath  of  the  citizen.  luppiter  Lapis  becomes 
specially  the  Dius  Fidius,  a  cult-title  which 
subsequently  sets  up  for  itself  and  produces  a 
further  offshoot  in  the  abstract  Fides.  Finally, 
towards  the  end  of  our  period  the  luppiter  of 
the  Capitol  emerges  triumphant,  as  it  were,  from 
his  struggle  with  his  rivals  and,  with  the  new 
title  of  luppiter  Optimus  Maximus, — the  '  best 
and  greatest,'  that  is,  of  all  the  luppiters — takes 
his  place  as  the  supreme  deity  of  the  Roman 
state  and  the  personification  of  the  greatness 
and  majesty  of  Rome  itself.  To  his  temple  here- 
after the  Roman  youth  will  come  to  make  his 
offering  when  he  takes  the  dress  of  manhood ; 
here  the  magistrates  will  do  sacrifice  before 
entering  on  their  year  of  office :  here  the 
victorious  general  will  pass  in  procession  with 
the  spoils  of  his  victory :  on  the  walls  shall  be 
suspended  treaties  with  foreign  nations  and 
83 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

offerings  sent  by  subject  princes  and  states  from 
all  quarters  of  the  world :  all  that  Rome  is  to  be, 
will  be,  as  it  were,  embodied  in  the  sky-spirit  of 
the  sacred  oak,  the  god  of  justice  and  of  victory 
in  war. 

luno. — luppiter  carries  with  him  into  the  state- 
worship  his  female  counterpart,  luno,  with  his 
own  characteristics,  in  a  certain  degree,  and  his 
own  privileges.  She  is  Lucina  and  Fulgura  as 
he  is  Lucetius  and  Fulgur :  white  cows  are  her 
offerings  as  white  steers  are  his :  as  the  Ides  are 
sacred  to  luppiter,  so — though  they  are  not  a 
festival — are  the  Calends  to  luno.  But  from  the 
first  she  shows  a  certain  independence  and 
develops  on  lines  of  her  own.  In  the  curious 
ceremony  of  the  fixing  of  the  Nones  (the  first 
quarter  of  the  month),  held  on  the  Calends  in  the 
curia  Calabra,  she  seems  to  appear  as  a  moon- 
goddess  :  the  rex  sacrorum,  after  a  report  from 
a  pontifex  as  to  the  appearance  of  the  new  moon, 
announces  the  result  in  the  formula :  '  I  summon 
thee  for  five  (or  seven)  days,  hollow  luno '  (dies  te 
quinque  [septem]  Jcalo,  luno  Covella :  hence  the 
name  Kalendae).  But  far  more  prominently — 
either  as  a  female  divinity  herself,  or,  as  some 
think,  owing  to  the  supposed  influence  of  the 
moon  on  female  life — does  luno  figure  as  the 
84 


WOKSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 

deity  of  women,  and  especially  in  association  with 
childbirth  and  marriage.  As  Lucina  she  is,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  presiding  deity  of  childbirth,  and 
her  festival  on  the  1st  of  March,  though  not  in 
the  Calendars  (because  confined  to  women  and 
not  therefore  a  festival  of  the  whole  people), 
attained  immense  popularity  under  the  title  of  the 
Matronalia.  She  has  too  a  general  superintend- 
ence of  the  rites  of  marriage,  and  the  various 
little  numina,  who  play  so  prominent  a  part  in 
the  ceremonies,  tend  to  attach  themselves  to  her 
as  cult-titles.  The  festival  of  the  servant-maids 
in  honour  of  luno  Caprotina  on  the  7th  of  July 
shows  the  same  notion  of  luno  as  the  women's 
goddess,  which  appears  again  in  common  parlance 
when  women  speak  of  their  luno,  just  as  men  do 
of  their  Genius.  Later  on  luno  acquires  the 
characteristics  of  majesty  (Regina)  and  protec- 
tion in  war  (Curitis,  Sospita),  partly  no  doubt 
as  luppiter's  counterpart,  but  more  directly 
through  the  introduction  of  cults  from  neighbour- 
ing Italian  towns. 

Mars. — We  have  seen  reason  to  believe  that  in 
the  earlier  stages  of  Roman  religion  Mars  was  a 
numen  of  vegetation,  but  though  the  Ambarvalia 
was  duly  taken  over  into  the  state-cult  and 
attained  a  very  high  degree  of  importance,  yet 
85 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

there  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  the  state-religion 
Mars  was  pre-eminently  associated  with  war. 
luppiter  might  help  at  need  in  averting  defeat 
and  awarding  victory,  but  it  was  with  Mars  that 
the  general  conduct  of  war  rested.  His  sacred 
animal  is  the  warlike  wolf,  his  symbols  the  spears 
and  the  sacred  shields  (ancilia),  which  during  his 
own  month  (Martins) — the  1st  of  which  is  his 
special  festival — his  priests  (Salii)  wearing  the 
full  war-dress  (trabea  and  tunica  picta)  carry 
with  sacred  dance  and  song  round  the  city. 
His  altar  is  in  the  Campus  Martius,  outside  the 
city-walls  and  therefore  within  the  sphere  of  the 
imperium  militiae,  and  the  other  festivals 
associated  with  him  are  of  a  warlike  character : 
the  races  of  the  war-horse  (Equirria)  on  March 
14  and  February  27,  and  the  great  race  on 
the  Ides  of  October,  when  the  winner  was 
solemnly  slain:  the  lustration  of  the  arms  at 
the  Quinquatrus  on  March  19  and  the  Arinilus- 
trium  of  October  19 — at  the  beginning  and  end 
of  the  campaigning  season :  and  the  lustration  of 
the  war- trumpets  on  the  23rd  of  March  and 
the  23rd  of  May.  But  above  all  in  honour  of 
Mars  is  held  the  great  quinquennial  lustrum 
associated  with  the  census,  when  the  people  are 
drawn  up  in  military  array  around  his  altar  in 
86 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 

the  Campus  Martius  and  the  solemn  offering 
of  the  suovetaurilia  (is  this  a  faint  relic  of  his 
agricultural  character  ?)  after  being  carried  three 
times  round  the  gathered  host,  is  offered  on  his 
altar  in  prayer  for  the  military  future  of  the 
state.  Hardly  any  god  in  the  state-cult  has  his 
character  so  clearly  marked,  and  we  may  regard 
Mars  as  a  deity  who,  taking  on  new  functions 
to  suit  the  needs  of  the  times,  almost  entirely 
lost  the  traces  of  his  original  nature. 

Quirinus. — luppiter  and  Mars  then  became  the 
great  state-deities  of  the  developed  community  and 
to  them  is  added,  as  the  contribution  of  the  Colline 
settlement,  their  own  particular  deity,  Quirinus. 
He,  like  them,  has  his  own  flamen ;  like  Mars  he 
has  his  Salii,  and  his  festival  finds  its  place  in 
the  Calendars  on  February  the  17th.  But  of  his 
ritual  and  character  we  know  practically  nothing  : 
the  ritual  was  obscured  because  his  festival 
coincided  with  the  much  more  popular  festival 
of  the  curiae,  the  stultorum  feriae:  of  his 
character,  we  can  only  conjecture  that  he  was 
to  the  Colline  settlement  what  Mars  was  to  the 
Palatine,  whereas  later  after  the  complete  amal- 
gamation he  seems  to  have  been  distinguished 
from  Mars  as  representing  '  armed  peace '  rather 
than  war — an  idea  which  is  borne  out  by  the 
87 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

associations  of  the  closely  allied  word  Quirites. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  we  have  in  luppiter,  Mars,  and 
Quirinus  the  great  state-triad  of  the  synoecismus, 
who  held  their  own  until  at  the  beginning  of  the 
next  epoch  they  were  supplanted  by  the  new 
Etruscan  triad  of  the  Capitol,  luppiter,  luno  and 
Minerva. 

2.  Organisation. — It  might  perhaps  be  thought 
that  the  organisation  of  religion  is  a  matter  re- 
mote from  its  spirit,  and  is  not  therefore  a 
suitable  subject  for  discussion,  where  the  object 
is  rather  to  bring  out  underlying  motives  and 
ideas :  but  in  dealing  with  the  Roman  religion, 
where  ceremonial  and  legal  precision  were  so 
prominent,  it  would  be  even  misleading  to  omit 
some  reference  to  the  very  characteristic  manner 
in  which  the  state,  taking  over  the  rather  chaotic 
elements  of  the  agricultural  worship,  organised 
them  into  something  like  a  consistent  whole. 
Its  most  complete  achievement  in  this  direction 
was  without  doubt  the  regulation  of  the  religious 
year.  We  have  spoken  many  times  of  the  Calen- 
dars (Fasti) :  it  is  necessary  now  to  obtain  some 
clearer  notion  of  what  they  were.  In  Rome 
itself  and  various  Italian  towns  have  been  found 
some  thirty  inscriptions,  one  almost  complete 
(Maffeiani),  the  others  more  or  less  fragmentary, 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 


giving  the  tables  of  the  months  and  marking 
precisely  the  character  and  occurrences  of  every 
day  in  the  year.  We  may  take  as  a  specimen 
the  latter  half  of  the  month  of  August  from  the 
Fasti  Maffeiani. 

A.  BID.  \P.  C.  VOLC.  N>. 

B.  F.  D.  C. 

C.  C.  E.  OPIC.  ISP. 

D.  C.  F.  C. 

E.  PORT.  ISP.  G.  VOLT.  KP. 

F.  C.  H.  ]SP. 

G.  VIN.  F.P.  A.  F. 
H.  C.  B.  F. 

A.  CONS.  KP.  C.  C. 

B.  EN. 

In  the  first  column  are  given  the  nundinal 
letters  of  the  days,  showing  their  position  in  the 
eight  days'  'week'  from  one  market  day  (nun- 
dinae)  to  the  next.  In  the  second  column  are 
noted  first  the  great  divisions  of  the  month, 
Calends,  Nones,  and  Ides,  and  then  the  religious 
character  of  each  individual  day  is  indicated  by 
certain  signs,  whose  explanations  throw  a  good 
deal  of  light  on  Roman  religious  notions.  It  will 
be  seen  that  the  letters  of  most  frequent  occur- 
rence are  F,  c,  and  N  (or  in  our  extract  \P): 
these  correspond  to  the  broad  distinction  between 
89 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

days  profane  and  sacred.  F  (fastus)  denotes  a 
day  on  which  the  business  of  the  state  may  be 
performed,  on  which  the  praetor  may  say  (fari) 
the  three  words,  do,  dico,  addico,  which  summed 
up  the  decisions  of  the  Roman  law:  c  (comi- 
tialis)  marks  a  day  on  which  the  legislative 
assemblies  (comitia)  may  be  held:  it  is  by  im- 
plication F  as  well.  N  (nefastus),  on  the  other 
hand,  denotes  the  sacred  day,  consecrated  to  the 
worship  of  the  gods,  on  which  therefore  state- 
business  may  not  be  transacted:  similarly  the 
very  mysterious  and  much  disputed  sign  N>, 
whether  it  differs  in  precise  signification  from  N  or 
not,  certainly  marks  a  day  of  sacred  character. 
EN,  which  occurs  once  in  this  extract  (from 
endotercisus,  the  old  Latin  form  of  intercisus) 
signifies  a  '  split '  day  (dies  fissus),  the  beginning 
and  end  of  which  were  sacred,  while  the  middle 
period  was  free  for  business.  In  the  second 
column  also  (in  large  letters  in  some  of  the  other 
Calendars)  are  named  the  feriae  publicae,  the 
great  annual  state -festivals,  fixed  for  one  par- 
ticular day  (feriae  stativae):  such,  in  this  case, 
are  the  Portunalia,  Vinalia,  and  Consualia. 

These  fasti  were  exhibited  in  the  Forum  and 
on  the  walls  of  temples,  and  the  conscientious 
Roman  could  have  no  possible  difficulty  in  find- 
90 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 

ing  out  when  lie  might  lawfully  transact  his 
business  and  what  festivals  the  state  was  ob- 
serving: of  the  355  days  of  the  old  Calendar 
11  were  fissi,  235  -were  fasti  (192  comitiales),  and 
109  nefasti.  We  may  remark  as  curious  features 
in  the  Calendar,  denoting  rigid  adherence  to  prin- 
ciple, that  with  one  exception,  the  Poplifugia  of 
July  5,  no  festival  ever  occurs  before  the  Nones, 
that  with  two  exceptions,  the  Regifugium  of 
February  24  and  the  Equirria  of  the  14th  of 
March,  no  festival  falls  on  an  even  day  of  the 
month,  and  that  there  is  a  marked  avoidance  of 
successive  feast-days :  even  the  three  days  of  the 
Lemuria  allow  an  interval  of  a  day  between 
each. 

In  the  matter  of  ritual  and  observance,  state- 
organisation — and  its  absence — are  alike  signifi- 
cant. Of  the  general  exactness  of  ritual  and  its 
specific  variations  on  different  occasions  a  fair 
notion  has  perhaps  already  been  gathered  ;  it 
may  help  to  fill  out  that  notion  if  we  can  put 
together  a  sketch  of  the  normal  process  of  a 
sacrifice  to  the  gods.  Before  the  sacrifice  began 
the  animal  to  be  offered  was  selected  and  tested : 
if  it  had  any  blemish  or  showed  any  reluctance, 
it  was  rejected.  If  it  were  whole  and  willing,  it 
was  bound  with  fillets  (infulae)  around  its  fore- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

head,  and  long  ribbons  (vittae)  depending  from 
them.  It  was  then  brought  to  the  altar  (ara),  by 
the  side  of  which  stood  a  portable  brazier  (foculus), 
The  celebrant — magistrate  or  priest — next  ap- 
proached dressed  in  the  toga,  girt  about  him  in 
a  peculiar  manner  (cinctus  Gabinus),  and  carried 
up  at  the  back  so  as  to  form  a  hood  (velato 
capite):  the  herald  proclaimed  silence,  and  the 
flute-player  began  to  play  his  instrument.  The 
first  part  of  the  offering  was  then  made  by  the 
pouring  of  wine  and  scattering  of  incense  on 
the  brazier :  it  was  followed  by  the  ceremonial 
slaughter  (immolatio)  of  the  animal.  The  cele- 
brant sprinkled  the  victim  with  wine  and  salted 
cake,  and  made  a  symbolic  gesture  with  the  knife. 
The  victim  was  then  taken  aside  by  the  attendants 
(victimarii),  and  actually  slaughtered  by  them : 
from  it  they  extracted  the  sacred  parts  (exta), 
liver,  heart,  gall,  lungs,  and  midriff,  and  after 
inspecting  them  to  see  that  they  had  no  abnor- 
mality— but  not  in  the  earlier  period  for  purposes 
of  augury — wrapped  them  in  pieces  of  flesh 
(augmenta),  cooked  them,  and  brought  them  back 
to  the  celebrant,  who  laid  them  as  an  offering 
upon  the  altar,  where  they  were  burnt.  The 
rest  of  the  flesh  (viscera)  was  divided  as  a  sacred 
meal  between  the  celebrant  and  his  friends — or  in 
92 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 

a  state-offering  among  the  priests,  and  probably 
the  magistrate.  We  cannot  refrain  from  remark- 
ing here  the  extreme  precision  of  ritual,  the 
scrupulous  care  with  which  the  human  side  of 
the  contract  was  fulfilled  and  the — almost  legal — 
division  of  the  victim  between  gods  and  men. 
But  though  the  ritual  was  so  exact,  one  must 
not  be  led  away  by  modern  analogies  to  suppose 
that  there  was  ever  anything  like  a  rigid  con- 
straint on  the  private  citizen  for  the  observance 
of  festivals.  The  state  -  festivals  were  in  the 
strictest  sense  offerings  made  to  the  gods  by  the 
representative  magistrates  or  priests,  and  if  they 
were  present,  all  was  done  that  was  required : 
the  whole  people  had  been,  by  a  legal  fiction, 
present  in  their  persons.  No  doubt  the  private 
citizen  would  often  attend  in  large  numbers  at 
the  celebrations,  especially  at  the  more  popular 
festivals,  but  from  some,  such  as  the  Vestalia, 
he  was  actually  excluded.  On  the  other  hand, 
though  it  did  not  demand  presence,  the  state 
did — at  least  theoretically — demand  the  observ- 
ance of  the  feast-day  by  private  individuals.  The 
root-notion  of  feriae  was  a  day  set  apart  for 
the  worship  of  the  gods,  and  on  it  therefore  the 
citizen  ought  to  do  '  no  manner  of  work.'  The 
state  observed  this  condition  fully  in  the  closing 
93 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

of  law-courts  and  the  absence  of  legislative  assem- 
blies, and  in  theory  too  the  private  citizen  must 
refrain  from  any  act  which  was  not  concerned 
with  the  worship  of  the  gods,  or  rendered  abso- 
lutely necessary,  as,  for  instance,  if '  his  ox  or  his 
ass  should  fall  into  a  pit.'  But  it  is  characteristic 
of  Rome  that  the  state  did  not  seek  for  offence,  but 
only  punished  it  if  accidentally  seen :  on  a  feast- 
day  the  rex  sacrorum  and  the  flamines  might 
not  see  work  being  done ;  they  therefore  sent  on 
a  herald  in  advance  to  announce  their  presence, 
and  an  actual  conviction  involved  a  money-fine. 
Perhaps  more  scrupulously  than  the  feriae  were 
observed  the  dies  religiosi,  days  of  'abstinence,' 
on  which  certain  acts,  such  as  marriage,  the  be- 
ginning of  any  new  piece  of  work,  or  the  offering 
of  sacrifice  to  the  gods,  were  forbidden:  such, 
in  the  oldest  period,  were  the  days  on  which  the 
mundus  was  open,  or  the  temple  of  Vesta  re- 
ceived the  matrons,  the  days  when  the  Salii 
carried  the  ancilia  in  procession,  and  the  periods 
of  the  two  festivals  of  the  dead  in  February  and 
May ;  but  for  eluding  their  observance  too  devices 
were  not  unknown. 

In  the  state-organisation  of  religion,  then,  we 
seem  to  see  just  the  same  features  from  which 
we  started:    as  a  basis  the  legal  conception  of 
94 


WORSHIP  OF  THE  STATE 

the  relation  of  god  to  man,  as  a  result  the  extreme 
care  and  precision  in  times  and  ceremonials,  as  a 
corollary  in  the  state  the  idea  of  legal  representa- 
tion and  the  consequent  looseness  of  hold  on  the 
action  of  the  individual. 


95 


CHAPTER  VIII 

AUGURIES   AND   AUSPICES 

So    far  we  have   been  considering  the  regular 
relations  of  man  and  god,  seen  in  recurring  or 
special  offerings,  in  vows  and  in  acts  of  purification 
and  lustration — all  based  on  the  contract-notion, 
all  endeavours  on  man's  part  to  fulfil  his  bounden 
duty,  that  the  gods  may  be  constrained  in  turn 
to  theirs.     But  so  strong  was  the  feeling  of  divine 
presence  and  influence  in  the  Roman's  mind,  that 
he  was  not  content  with  doing  his  best  by  these 
regular  means  to  secure  the  favour  of  the  gods, 
but  wished  before  undertaking  any  business  of 
importance  to  be  able  to  assure  himself  of  their 
approval.     His  practical  common-sense  evolved, 
as  it  were,  a  complete  '  code ' — in  the  flight  and 
song  of  birds,  in  the  direction  of  the  lightning- 
flash,  in  the   conduct  of  men  and  animals — by 
which  he  believed  that  the  gods  communicated 
to  him  their  intentions :  sometimes  these  indica- 
tions (auspicia)  might  be  vouchsafed  by  the  gods 
96 


AUGURIES  AND  AUSPICES 

unasked  (oblativa),  sometimes  they  would  be 
given  in  answer  to  request  (impetrativa) :  but 
as  to  their  meaning,  there  could  be  no  doubt, 
provided  they  were  interpreted  by  one  skilled  in 
the  lore  and  tradition  of  augury.  We  may 
observe  here,  though  our  evidence  is  much 
slighter,  the  same  three  stages  which  we  have 
noticed  in  the  sacrificial  worship,  the  homely 
domestic  auspices,  the  auguries  of  the  agri- 
cultural life,  and  the  organised  system  in  the 
state. 

In  the  household  the  use  of  auspices  was  in 
origin  at  any  rate  very  general  indeed  :  '  Nothing,' 
Cicero  tells  us, '  of  importance  used  to  be  under- 
taken unless  with  the  sanction  of  the  auspices ' 
(auspicato).  The  right  of  interrogating  the  will 
of  the  gods,  rested,  as  one  might  expect,  with  the 
master  of  the  house,  assisted  no  doubt  by  the 
private  augur  as  the  repository  of  lore  and  the 
interpreter  of  what  the  master  saw.  But  of 
the  details  of  domestic  augury  we  know  but 
little.  Cato  in  one  passage  insists  on  the 
extreme  importance  of  silence  for  the  purpose, 
and  Festus  suggests  that  this  was  secured  by  the 
master  of  the  house  rising  in  the  depths  of 
the  night  to  inspect  the  heavens.  We  have  seen 
already  that  the  taking  of  the  auspices  played 
G  97 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

an  important  part  in  the  ceremonies  of  betrothal 
and  marriage,  and  that  the  indications  of  the 
divine  will  might  be  very  varied  we  may  gather 
from  a  story  in  Cicero.  An  aunt  wishing  to  take 
the  auspices  for  her  niece's  betrothal,  conducted 
her  into  an  open  consecrated  space  (sacellum)  and 
sat  down  on  the  stool  of  augury  (selld)  with  her 
niece  standing  at  her  side.  After  a  while  the 
girl  tired  and  asked  her  aunt  to  give  her  a  little 
of  the  stool :  the  aunt  replied,  '  My  child,  I  give 
up  my  seat  to  you ' :  nothing  further  happened 
and  this  answer  turned  out  in  fact  to  be  the 
auspicious  sign :  the  aunt  died,  the  niece  married 
the  widower  and  so  became  mistress  of  the 
house. 

Of  augury  in  agricultural  life  we  have  some 
indication  in  the  annual  observance  of  the 
'spring  augury'  (augurium  verniserum)  and 
the  midsummer  ceremony  of  the  augurium 
canarium,  which  seems  to  have  been  a  com- 
bination of  the  offering  of  a  red  dog  (possibly  to 
avert  mildew)  and  an  augury  for  the  success  of 
the  crops.  To  the  rustic  stratum  possibly  belongs 
also  the  augurium  salutis  populi,  though  later  it 
was  a  yearly  act  celebrated  whenever  the  Roman 
army  was  not  at  war  and  so  became  connected 
with  the  shutting  of  the  temple  of  lanus. 
98 


AUGURIES  AND  AUSPICES 

The  state  greatly  developed  and  organised  the 
whole  system  of  auguries  and  auspices.  The 
college  of  augurs  ranked  second  only  in  im- 
portance to  the  pontifical  college,  and  their 
duties  with  regard  to  both  augury  and  auspice 
are  sufficiently  clear.  Like  the  pontifices  in 
relation  to  cult,  they  are  the  storehouse  of  all 
tradition,  and  to  them  appeal  may  be  made 
in  all  cases  of  doubt  both  public  and  private : 
they  were  jealous  of  their  secrets  and  in  later 
times  their  mutual  consciousness  of  deception 
became  proverbial.  The  right  of  augury — in 
origin  simply  the  inspection  of  the  heavens — was 
theirs  alone,  and  it  was  exercised  particularly  on 
the  annual  occasions  mentioned  and  at  the 
installation  of  priests,  of  which  we  get  a  typical 
instance  in  Livy's  account  of  the  consecration  of 
Numa. 

The  auspices  on  the  other  hand — in  origin 
'  signs  from  birds '  (avis,  spicere) — were  the 
province  of  the  magistrate  about  to  undertake 
some  definite  action  on  behalf  of  the  state 
whether  at  home  or  on  the  field  of  battle.  Here 
the  augur's  functions  were  merely  preparatory 
and  advisory.  It  was  his  duty  to  prepare  the 
templum,  the  spot  from  which  the  auspices  are  to 
be  taken — always  a  square  space,  with  boundaries 
99 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

unbroken  except  at  the  entrance,  not  surrounded 
by  wall  or  necessarily  by  line,  but  clearly  indi- 
cated  (effatus)   by   the  augur,  and  marked    off 
(liberatus)  from  the  surroundings :  in  the  comitia 
and  other  places  in  Rome  there  were  permanent 
templa,  but   elsewhere   they   must   be   specially 
made.     The  magistrate  then  enters  the  templum 
and  observes  the  signs  (spectio) :  if  there  is  any 
doubt    as     to    interpretation  —  and    seeing    the 
immense    complication    of  the    traditions    (dis- 
ciplina),  this  must  often  have  been  the  case — 
the  augur  is  referred  to  as  interpreter.     The  signs 
demanded  (impetrativa)  were  originally  always 
connected   with   the  appearance,   song  or  flight 
of  birds — higher  or  lower,  from  left  to  right  or 
right  to  left,   etc.     Later  others  were  included, 
and  with  the  arrny  in  the  field  it  became  the 
regular  practice   to  take  the  auspices  from  the 
feeding  of  the  sacred  chickens  (pulli):  the  best 
sign  being  obtained  if,  in  their  eagerness  to  feed, 
they  let  fall  some  of  the  grain  from  their  beaks 
(tripvdium  solistimum) — a  result  not  difficult  to 
secure  by  previous  treatment  and  a  careful  selec- 
tion of  the  kind  of  grain  supplied  to  them.     But 
besides  this  deliberate  'asking  for  signs,'  public 
business  might   at  any  moment  be  interrupted 
if    the    gods  voluntarily  sent  an   indication   of 
100 


AUGURIES  AND  AUSPICES 

disapproval  (oblativa):  the  augurs  then  had 
always  to  be  at  hand  to  advise  the  magistrates 
whether  notice  should  be  taken  of  such  signs, 
and,  if  so,  what  was  their  signification,  and  they 
even  seem  to  have  had  certain  rights  of  reporting 
themselves  (nuntiatio)  the  occurrence  of  adverse 
ones.  The  sign  of  most  usual  occurrence  would 
be  lightning — sometimes  such  an  unexpected 
event  as  the  seizure  of  a  member  of  the  assembly 
with  epilepsy  (morbus  comitialis) — and  we  know 
to  what  lengths  political  obstructionists  went  in 
later  times  in  the  observation  of  fictitious  signs, 
or  even  the  prevention  of  business  by  the  mere 
announcement  of  their  intention  to  see  an  un- 
favourable omen  (servare  de  caelo).  The  com- 
plications and  ramifications  of  the  augur's  art 
are  infinite,  but  the  main  idea  should  by  now  be 
plain,  and  it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
kindred  art  of  the  soothsayer  {haruspex),  oracles, 
and  the  interpretation  of  fate  by  the  drawing  of 
lots  (sortes)  are  all  later  foreign  introductions: 
auspice  and  augury  are  the  only  genuine  Roman 
methods  for  interpreting  the  will  of  the  gods. 

Here  then  in  household,  fields,  and  state,  we 

have    a    second    type   of  relation   to   the  gods, 

running    parallel    to    the    ordinary  practice    of 

sacrifice  and  prayer,  distinct  yet  not  fundament- 

101 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

ally  different.  As  it  is  man's  function  to  pro- 
pitiate the  higher  spirits  and  prevent,  if  possible, 
the  wrecking  of  his  plans  by  their  opposition,  so 
it  is  his  business,  if  he  can,  to  find  out  their 
intentions  before  he  engages  on  any  serious 
undertaking.  As  in  the  ius  sacrum  his  legal 
mind  leads  him  to  assume  that  the  deities  accept 
the  responsibility  of  the  contract,  when  his  own 
part  is  fulfilled,  so  here,  like  a  practical  man  of 
business,  he  assumes  their  construction  of  a  code 
of  communication,  which  he  has  learned  to 
interpret.  In  its  origin  it  is  a  notion  common 
to  many  primitive  religions,  but  in  its  elaboration 
it  is  peculiarly  and  distinctively  Italian,  and,  as 
we  know  it,  Roman. 


1 02 


CHAPTER  IX 

RELIGION   AND   MORALITY — CONCLUSION 

IT  might  be  said  that  a  religion — the  expression 
of  man's  relation  to  the  unseen — has  not  neces- 
sarily any  connection  with  morality — man's  action 
in  himself  and  towards  his  neighbours  :  that  an 
individual — or  even  a  nation — might  perfectly 
fulfil  the  duties  imposed  by  the  'powers  above,' 
without  being  influenced  in  conduct  and  character. 
Such  a  view  might  seem  to  find  an  apt  illustra- 
tion in  the  religion  of  Rome:  the  ceremonial 
pietas  towards  the  gods  appears  to  have  little  to 
do  with  the  making  of  man  or  nation.  But  in 
the  history  of  the  world  the  test  of  religions  must 
be  their  effect  on  the  character  of  those  who 
believed  in  them:  religion  is  no  doubt  itself  an 
outcome  of  character,  but  it  reacts  upon  it,  and 
must  either  strengthen  or  weaken.  We  are  not 
therefore  justified  in  dismissing  the  'Religion  of 
Nuina'  without  inquiry  as  to  its  relation  to 
103 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

morality,  for  on  our  answer  to  that  question 
must  largely  depend  our  judgment  as  to  its 
value. 

We  are  of  course  in  a  peculiarly  difficult  posi- 
tion to  grapple  with  this  problem  through  lack 
of  contemporary  evidence.  The  Rome  we  know, 
in  the  epochs  when  we  can  fairly  judge  of 
character  and  morality,  was  not  the  Rome  in 
which  the  '  Religion  of  Numa '  had  grown  up 
and  remained  unquestioned :  it  had  been  overlaid 
with  foreign  cults  and  foreign  ideas,  had  been 
used  by  priests  and  magistrates  as  a  political 
instrument,  and  discounted  among  the  educated 
through  the  influence  of  philosophy.  But  we 
may  remember  in  the  first  place  that  even  then, 
especially  in  the  household  and  in  the  country, 
the  old  religion  had  probably  a  much  firmer  hold 
than  one  might  imagine  from  literary  evidence, 
in  the  second  that  national  character  is  not  the 
growth  of  a  day,  so  that  we  may  safely  refer 
permanent  characteristics  to  the  period  when 
the  old  religion  held  its  own. 

It  may  be  admitted  at  once  that  the  direct 
influence  on  morality  was  very  small  indeed. 
There  was  no  table  of  commandments  backed 
by  the  religious  sanction :  the  sense  of  '  sin,' 
except  through  breach  of  ritual,  was  practically 
104 


RELIGION  AND  MORALITY 

unknown.  It  is  true  that  in  the  very  early  leges 
regiae  some  notion  of  this  kind  is  seen — a  signifi- 
cant glimpse  of  what  the  original  relation  may 
have  been :  it  is  there  ordained  that  the  patron 
who  betrayed  his  client,  or  the  client  who  deceived 
his  patron,  shall  be  condemned  to  luppiter ;  the 
parricide  to  the  spirits  of  his  dead  ancestors, 
the  husband  who  sells  his  wife  to  the  gods  of  the 
underworld,  the  man  who  removes  his  neighbour's 
landmark  to  Terminus,  the  stealer  of  corn  to 
Ceres.  All  these  persons  shall  be  sacri :  they  have 
offended  against  the  gods  and  the  gods  will  see 
to  their  punishment.  But  these  are  old-world 
notions  which  soon  passed  into  the  background 
and  the  state  took  over  the  punishment  of  such 
offenders  in  the  ordinary  course  of  law.  Nor 
again  in  the  prayers  of  men  to  gods  is  there  a 
trace  of  a  petition  for  moral  blessings :  the  magis- 
trate prays  for  the  success  and  prosperity  of  the 
state,  the  farmer  for  the  fertility  of  his  crops 
and  herds,  even  the  private  individual,  who  sus- 
pends his  votive-tablet  in  the  temple,  pays  his 
due  for  health  or  commercial  success  vouchsafed 
to  himself  or  his  relations.  'Men  call  luppiter 
greatest  and  best,'  says  Cicero, '  because  he  makes 
us  not  just  or  temperate  or  wise,  but  sound  and 
healthy  and  rich  and  wealthy.'  Still  less,  until 
105 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

we  come  to  the  moralists  of  the  Empire,  is  there 
any  sense  of  that  immediate  and  personal  relation 
of  the  individual  to  a  higher  being,  which  is 
really  in  religion,  far  more  than  commandments 
and  ordinances,  the  mainspring  and  safeguard 
of  morality :  even  the  conception  of  the  Genius, 
the  '  nearest '  perhaps  of  all  unseen  powers,  had 
nothing  of  this  feeling  in  it,  and  it  may  be 
significant  that,  just  because  of  his  nearness  to 
man,  the  Genius  never  quite  attained  to  god- 
head. As  far  as  direct  relation  is  concerned, 
religion  and  morality  were  to  the  Roman  two 
independent  spheres  with  a  very  small  point  of 
contact. 

Nor  even  in  its  indirect  influence  does  the 
formal  observance  of  the  Roman  worship  seem 
likely  at  first  sight  to  have  done  much  for 
personal  or  national  morality.  Based  upon  fear, 
stereotyped  in  the  form  of  a  legal  relationship, 
religio — '  the  bounden  obligation  ' — made,  no 
doubt,  for  a  kind  of  conscientiousness  in  its  ad- 
herents, but  a  cold  conscientiousness,  devoid  of 
emotion  and  incapable  of  expanding  itself  to 
include  other  spheres  or  prompt  to  a  similar 
scrupulousness  in  other  relations.  The  rigid  and 
constant  distinction  of  sacred  and  profane  would 
incline  the  Roman  to  fulfil  the  routine  of  his 
1 06 


RELIGION  AND  MORALITY 

religious  duty  and  then  turn,  almost  with  a  sigh 
of  relief,  to  the  occupations  of  normal  life,  carrying 
with  him  nothing  more  than  the  sense  of  a 
burden  laid  aside  and  a  pledge  of  external  pro- 
sperity. Even  the  religious  act  itself  might  be 
without  moral  significance :  as  we  have  seen,  the 
worshipper  might  be  wholly  ignorant  of  the 
character,  even  the  name  of  the  deity  he  wor- 
shipped, and  in  any  case  the  motive  of  his  action 
was  naught,  the  act  itself  everything.  Nor  again 
had  the  Roman  religion  any  trace  of  that  power- 
ful incentive  to  morality,  a  doctrine  of  rewards 
and  punishments  in  a  future  life:  the  ideas  as 
to  the  fate  of  the  dead  were  fluctuating  and 
vague,  and  the  Roman  was  in  any  case  much 
more  interested  in  their  influence  on  himself 
than  in  their  possible  experiences  after  death. 

The  divorce  then  between  religion  and  morality 
seems  almost  complete  and  it  is  not  strange  that 
most  modern  writers  speak  of  the  Roman  religion 
as  a  tiresome  ritual  formalism,  almost  wholly 
lacking  in  ethical  value.  And  yet  it  did  not 
present  itself  in  this  light  to  the  Romans  them- 
selves. Cicero,  sceptic  as  he  was,  could  speak 
of  it  as  the  cause  of  Rome's  greatness ;  Augustus, 
the  practical  politician,  could  believe  that  its 
revival  was  an  essential  condition  for  the  re- 
107 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

naissance  of  the  Roman  character.  Have  we,  in 
our  brief  examination  of  its  characteristics,  seen 
any  features  which  may  suggest  the  solution  of 
this  apparent  antagonism  ?  Was  there  in  this 
formalism  a  life  which  escapes  us,  as  we  handle 
the  dry  bones  of  antiquarianism  ? 

In  the  first  place  there  may  be  a  danger  that 
we  underrate  the  value  of  formalism  itself.  It 
spells  routine,  but  routine  is  not  without  value 
in  the  strengthening  of  character.  The  private 
citizen,  who  conscientiously  day  by  day  had 
carried  out  the  worship  of  his  household  gods 
and  month  by  month  observed  the  sacred  abstin- 
ence from  work  on  the  days  of  festival,  was 
certainly  not  less  fitted  to  take  his  place  as  a 
member  of  a  strenuous  and  well-organised  com- 
munity, or  to  serve  obediently  and  quietly  in 
the  army  on  campaign.  Even  the  magistrate  in 
the  execution  of  his  religious  duties  must  have 
acquired  an  exactness  and  method,  which  would 
not  be  valueless  in  the  conduct  of  public  business. 
And  when  we  pass  to  the  origin  of  this  formalism 
— the  legal  relation — the  connection  with  the 
Roman  character  becomes  at  once  more  obvious. 
The  'lawgivers  of  the  world,'  who  developed 
constitution  and  code  to  a  systematised  whole 
such  as  antiquity  had  not  dreamed  of  before, 
108 


RELIGION  AND  MORALITY 

imported,  we  may  say  if  we  like,  their  legal 
notions  into  the  sphere  of  religion :  but  we  must 
not  forget  the  other  side  of  the  question.  The 
permanence  and  success  of  this  greater  contract 
with  higher  powers — the  feeling  that  the  gods 
did  regard  and  reward  exact  fulfilment  of  duty — 
cannot  have  been  without  re-action  on  the  rela- 
tions of  the  life  of  the  community :  it  was,  as  it 
were,  a  higher  sanction  to  the  legal  point  of 
view :  a  pledge  that  the  relations  of  citizen  and 
state  too  were  rightly  conceived.  '  There  is,' 
says  Cicero,  speaking  of  the  death  of  Clodius  in 
the  language  of  a  later  age,  '  there  is  a  divine 
power  which  inspired  that  criminal  to  his  own 
ruin :  it  was  not  by  chance  that  he  expired 
before  the  shrine  of  the  Bona  Dea,  whose  rites 
he  had  violated':  the  divine  justice  is  the 
sanction  of  the  human  law.  Even  in  the  fear, 
from  which  all  ultimately  sprang,  there  was  a 
training  in  self-repression  and  self-subordination, 
which  in  a  more  civilised  age  must  result  in  a 
valuable  respect  and  obedience.  The  descend- 
ants of  those  who  had  made  religion  out  of  an 
attempt  to  appease  the  hostile  numina,  feeling 
themselves  not  indeed  on  more  familiar  terms 
with  their  'unknown  gods/  but  only  perhaps 
a  little  more  confident  of  their  own  strength, 
109 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

were  not  likely  to  be  wanting  in  a  disciplined 
sense  of  dependence  and  an  appreciation  of  the 
value  of  respect  for  authority,  which  alone  can 
give  stability  to  a  constitution.  If  fear  with  the 
Romans  was  not  the  beginning  of  theological 
wisdom,  it  was  yet  an  important  contribution 
to  the  character  of  a  disciplined  state. 

But,  as  I  have  hinted  in  the  course  of  this 
sketch  more  than  once,  the  answer  to  this 
problem,  as  well  as  the  key  to  the  general  under- 
standing of  the  Roman  religion,  is  to  be  found 
in  the  worship  of  the  household.  If  we  knew 
more  of  it,  we  should  see  more  clearly  where 
religion  and  morality  joined  hands,  but  we  know 
enough  to  give  us  a  clue.  There  not  only  are 
the  principal  events  of  life,  birth,  adolescence, 
marriage,  attended  by  their  religious  sanction, 
but  in  the  ordinary  course  of  the  daily  round 
the  divine  presence  and  the  dependence  of  man 
are  continually  emphasised.  The  gods  are  given 
their  portion  of  the  family  meal,  the  sanctified 
dead  are  recalled  to  take  their  share  of  the 
family  blessings.  The  result  was  not  merely  an 
approach — collectively,  not  individually — to  that 
sense  of  the  nearness  of  the  unseen,  which  has 
so  great  an  effect  on  the  actions  of  the  living, 
but  a  very  strong  bond  of  family  union  which 
no 


RELIGION  AND  MORALITY 

lay  at  the  root  of  the  life  of  the  state.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  find  a  clearer  expression  of  the 
notion  than  in  the  fact  that  the  same  word 
pietas,  which  expresses  the  due  fulfilment  of 
man's  duty  to  god,  is  also  the  ideal  of  the 
relations  of  the  members  of  a  household :  filial 
piety  was,  in  fact,  but  another  aspect  of  that 
Tightness  of  relation,  which  reveals  itself  in  the 
worship  of  the  gods.  No  doubt  that,  in  the 
city-life  of  later  periods,  this  ideal  broke  down 
on  both  sides :  household  worship  was  neglected 
and  family  life  became  less  dutiful.  But  it  was 
still,  especially  in  the  country,  the  true  backbone 
of  Roman  society,  and  no  one  can  read  the  open- 
ing odes  of  Horace's  third  book  without  feeling 
the  strength  of  Augustus'  appeal  to  it. 

And  if  we  translate  this,  as  we  have  learned  to 
do,  into  terms  of  the  state,  we  can  get  some  idea 
of  what  the  Romans  meant  by  their  debt  to  their 
religion.  As  the  household  was  bound  together 
by  the  tie  of  common  worship,  as  in  the  inter- 
mediate stage  the  clan,  severed  politically  and 
socially,  yet  felt  itself  reunited  in  the  gentile 
rites,  so  too  the  state  was  welded  into  a  whole 
by  the  regularly  recurring  annual  festivals  and 
the  assurance  of  the  divine  sanction  on  its  under- 
takings. It  might  be  that  in  the  course  of  time 
in 


THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME 

these  rites  lost  their  meaning  and  the  community 
no  longer  by  personal  presence  expressed  its 
service  to  the  gods,  but  the  cult  stood  there  still, 
as  the  type  of  Rome's  union  to  the  higher  powers 
and  a  guarantee  of  their  assistance  against  all 
foes:  the  religion  of  Rome  was,  as  it  has  been 
said,  the  sanctification  of  patriotism — the  Roman 
citizen's  highest  moral  ideal.  It  has  been 
remarked,  perhaps  with  partial  truth,  that  the 
religion  of  the  dZneid — in  many  ways  a  summary 
of  Roman  thought  and  feeling — is  the  belief  in 
the  fata  Romae  and  their  fulfilment.  The  very 
impersonality  of  this  conception  makes  it  a  good 
picture  of  what  religion  was  in  the  Roman  state. 
It  was  not,  as  with  the  Jews,  a  strong  conviction 
of  the  Tightness  of  their  own  belief  and  a  certainty 
that  their  divine  protectors  must  triumph  over 
those  of  other  nations,  but  a  feeling  of  the  constant 
presence  of  some  spirits,  who, '  if  haply  they  might 
find  them,'  would,  on  the  payment  of  their  due, 
bear  their  part  in  the  great  progress  of  right  and 
justice  and  empire  on  which  Rome  must  march 
to  her  victory.  It  was  the  duty  of  the  citizen, 
with  this  conception  of  his  city  before  his  eyes, 
to  see  to  it  that  the  state's  part  in  the  contract 
was  fulfilled.  From  his  ancestors  had  been 
inherited  the  tradition,  which  told  him  the  when, 
112 


RELIGION  AND  MORALITY 

where,  and  how,  and  in  the  preservation  of  that 
tradition  and  its  due  performance  consisted  at 
once  Rome's  duty  and  her  glory.  '  If  we  wish,' 
says  Cicero,  'to  compare  ourselves  with  other 
nations,  we  may  be  found  in  other  respects  equal 
or  even  inferior ;  in  religion,  that  is  in  the  worship 
of  the  gods,  we  are  far  superior.'  The  religion  of 
Rome  may  not  have  advanced  the  theology  or 
the  ethics  of  the  world,  but  it  made  and  held 
together  a  nation. 


H  113 


WORKS  BEARING  ON 
THE  EARLY  RELIGION  OF  ROME 

The  Golden  Bough,  (2nd  Ed.).    J.  Gr.  FRAZER. 

Sistory  of  Rome,  BOOK  i.  CHAP.  xn.     TH.  MOMMSEN. 

Die  Religion  der  Homer.     E.  AUST. 

Religion  imd  Kultus  der  Rbmer.     G.  WISSOWA. 

II  Culto  Privato  di  Roma  Antica,  PART  i.    A.  DE-MARCHI. 

The  Roman  Festivals.    W.  WARDE  FOWLER. 

The  Religion  of  Numa.     J.  B.  CARTER. 


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at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


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